Electroweak Constraints on Nuclear Neutron Distributions and the Low-Energy Weak Mixing Angle
Abstract
Coherent elastic neutrino--nucleus scattering (CEνNS) offers a low-energy probe of the weak mixing angle, sin2θW, and possible new physics in the neutrino sector. Its reliable interpretation, however, requires independent constraints on the neutron distributions of the target nuclei. We exploit correlations across nuclei within an extended Skyrme energy-density-functional framework to propagate constraints from the CREX and PREX-II parity-violating electron-scattering (PVES) measurements to CEνNS targets. This yields neutron form factors and radii, with relative radius uncertainties below 1%. Using these inferred neutron form factors, we jointly analyze the COHERENT CsI, Ge, and Ar data and obtain sin2θW=0.231+0.016−0.015, consistent with the Standard Model prediction. These results provide the first electroweak-experimentally constrained benchmarks for nuclear-structure studies, neutrino-sector electroweak tests, and CEνNS signal predictions in dark-matter detectors.
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BibTeX
@misc{huang2026electroweak,
title = {{Electroweak Constraints on Nuclear Neutron Distributions and the Low-Energy Weak Mixing Angle}},
author = {Xu-Run Huang and Tong-Gang Yue and Zhen Zhang and Lie-Wen Chen},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.03751},
eprint = {2611.03751},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.03751},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Electroweak Constraints on Nuclear Neutron Distributions and the Low-Energy Weak Mixing Angle
AU - Xu-Run Huang
AU - Tong-Gang Yue
AU - Zhen Zhang
AU - Lie-Wen Chen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.03751
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.03751
AB - Coherent elastic neutrino--nucleus scattering (CEνNS) offers a low-energy probe of the weak mixing angle, sin^2θ_W, and possible new physics in the neutrino sector. Its reliable interpretation, however, requires independent constraints on the neutron distributions of the target nuclei. We exploit correlations across nuclei within an extended Skyrme energy-density-functional framework to propagate constraints from the CREX and PREX-II parity-violating electron-scattering (PVES) measurements to CEνNS targets. This yields neutron form factors and radii, with relative radius uncertainties below 1%. Using these inferred neutron form factors, we jointly analyze the COHERENT CsI, Ge, and Ar data and obtain sin^2θ_W=0.231^+0.016_−0.015, consistent with the Standard Model prediction. These results provide the first electroweak-experimentally constrained benchmarks for nuclear-structure studies, neutrino-sector electroweak tests, and CEνNS signal predictions in dark-matter detectors.
ER -