Effect of neutrino electromagnetic properties on quasielastic neutral-current neutrino-nucleus scattering*

Abstract In the quasielastic region, we investigate the impact of neutrino electromagnetic properties—constrained by recent experimental data—on the electroweak neutral current reaction process . To describe nuclear dynamics relativistically, we employ the quantum hadrodynamics model, which can reliably reproduce experimental results in this kinematic regime. In this study, we explore physics beyond the Standard Model by incorporating the neutrino’s magnetic and electric dipole form factors, as well as its charge radius, into the electroweak interaction framework within 12 C. Specifically, we use experimentally derived values for the neutrino charge radius and magnetic moment at zero four-momentum transfer ( ) to compute the differential cross section of ν - 12 C scattering. Our results indicate that the contributions from the charge radius and electric dipole form factor are negligible. However, the magnetic moment exhibits a pronounced dependence on , and its effect becomes significant at low momentum transfers.