title: Nuclear corrections in neutrino-nucleus deep inelastic scattering and their compatibility with global nuclear parton-distribution-function analyses.
abstract: We perform a global χ² analysis of nuclear parton distribution functions using data from charged current neutrino-nucleus (νA) deep-inelastic scattering (DIS), charged-lepton-nucleus (ℓ(±)A) DIS, and the Drell-Yan (DY) process. We show that the nuclear corrections in νA DIS are not compatible with the predictions derived from ℓ(±)A DIS and DY data. We quantify this result using a hypothesis-testing criterion based on the χ² distribution which we apply to the total χ² as well as to the χ² of the individual data sets. We find that it is not possible to accommodate the data from νA and ℓ(±)A DIS by an acceptable combined fit. Our result has strong implications for the extraction of both nuclear and proton parton distribution functions using combined neutrino and charged-lepton data sets.
authors.affiliation: LPSC, Université Joseph Fourier/CNRS-IN2P3/INPG, UMR5821, Grenoble, F-38026, France.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kovařík
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Schienbein
authors.forename: F I
authors.initials: FI
authors.lastname: Olness
authors.forename: J Y
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Keppel
authors.forename: J G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Morfín
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Owens
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stavreva