Radiative Corrections and Neutrino Scattering

Elastic neutrino-electron scattering is an important process at accelerator based neutrino experiments. The process has negligible hadronic uncertainty making it an incisive tool for normalizing neutrino flux, a critical issue for oscillation experiments. However the process is subject to large radiative corrections that differ according to the precise experimental conditions and detector resolutions. This paper collects existing results and new calculations for radiative corrections to total and differential cross sections in elastic neutrino-electron scattering accompanied by a single photon, ƒËe ¨ ƒËe(ƒÁ), where ƒË denotes any flavor of neutrino or antineutrino. Calculations are performed within the Fermi effective theory, neglecting corrections of order EƒË 2/m2 W (where mW~ 80GeV), and neglecting second order electroweak corrections of order ƒ¿2. Analytic results for the electron]energy spectrum and for the total electromagnetic energy spectrum are presented. Double-differential cross sections are presented w.r.t. electron energy and electron scattering angle, and w.r.t. electromagnetic (electron plus photon) energy and electron scattering angle. The triple-differential cross section is presented w.r.t. electron angle, electron energy and photon energy. Illustrative applications to accelerator based neutrino experiments are discussed.