Nuclear structure and neutrino-nucleus interaction

Recent years have witnessed an intense experimental and theoretical activity oriented towards a better comprehension of neutrino nucleus interaction. While the main motivation for this task is the demand coming from oscillation experiments in their search for a precise determination of neutrino properties, the relevance of neutrino interaction with matter is more wide-ranging. It is imperative for astrophysics, hadronic and nuclear physics, and physics beyond the standard model. The experimental information on neutrino induced reactions is rapidly growing, and the corresponding theoretical description is a challenging proposition, since the energy scales of interest span a vast region, going from few MeV for solar neutrinos, to tens of MeV for the interpretation of experiments with the muon and pion decay at rest and the detection of neutrinos coming from the core collapse of supernova, and to hundreds of MeV or few GeV for the detection of atmospheric neutrinos, and for the neutrino oscillation program of the MiniBooNE experiment. The presence of neutrinos, being chargeless particles, can only be inferred by detecting the secondary particles created in colliding and interacting with the matter. Nuclei are often used as neutrino detectors, and in particular 12C which is a component of many scintillator detectors. Thus, the interpretation of neutrino data heavily relies on detailed and quantitative knowledge of the features of the neutrino-nucleus interaction. The nuclear structure methods used in the evaluation of the neutrino-nucleus cross section are reviewed. Detailed comparison between the experimental and theoretical results establishes benchmarks needed for verification and/or parameter adjustment of the nuclear models. Having a reliable tool for such calculation is of great importance in a variety of applications, such as the description of the r-process nucleosynthesis. (author)