Charged lepton production from iron induced by atmospheric neutrinos

The charged current lepton production induced by neutrinos in Fe-56 nuclei has been studied. The calculations have been done for the quasielastic as well as the inelastic reactions assuming Delta-dominance and take into account the effect of Pauli blocking, Fermi motion and the renormalization of weak transition strengths in the nuclear medium. The quasielastic production cross-sections for lepton production are found to be strongly reduced due to nuclear effects, while there is about 10% reduction in the inelastic cross-sections in the absence of the final-state interactions of the pions. The numerical results for the momentum and angular distributions of the leptons averaged over the various atmospheric-neutrino spectra at the Soudan and Gran Sasso sites have been presented. The effect of nuclear-model dependence and the atmospheric-flux dependence on the relative yield of mu to e has been studied and discussed.