Charged current neutrino cross section and tau energy loss at ultrahigh energies

2007/09/30 by N. Armesto, C. Merino, G. Parente +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.77.013001

published as Phys.Rev.D77:013001,2008 · 20 pages and 11 figures

arxiv created 2007/10/02 · openalex publication_date 2008/01/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

We evaluate both the tau-lepton energy loss produced by photonuclear interactions and the neutrino charged current cross section at ultrahigh energies, relevant to neutrino bounds with Earth-skimming tau neutrinos, using different theoretical and phenomenological models for nucleon and nucleus structure functions. The theoretical uncertainty is estimated by taking different extrapolations of the structure function F₂ to very low values of x, in the low and moderate Q² range for the tau-lepton interaction and at high Q² for the neutrino-nucleus inelastic cross section. It is at these extremely low values of x where nuclear shadowing and parton saturation effects are unknown and could be stronger than usually considered. For tau and neutrino energies E=10⁹ GeV we find uncertainties of a factor 4 for the tau energy loss and of a factor 2 for the charged current neutrino-nucleus cross section.

Citations

• Energy loss of muons and taus through inelastic scattering on nuclei
• The ALLM parameterization of sigma_tot(gamma* p) - an update
• Saturation effects in deep inelastic scattering at lowQ2and its implications on diffraction
• Geometric scaling in ultrahigh-energy neutrino scattering and nonlinear perturbative QCD

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