Neutrino Nuclear Physics

A. W. Thomas (Adelaide) and G. A. Miller

In a recent and very stimulating paper[69], the NuTeV collaboration reported a determination of $\sin^2 \theta_W$, based on a comparison of charged and neutral current neutrino interactions with a nuclear target (Fe), which differs from the standard model prediction by three standard deviations. In view of the importance of such a result it is extremely important that the sources of systematic error associated with using a nuclear target be clearly identified and examined. We plan to studied influence of the higher-twist effects of nuclear shadowing[70], those related to vector meson dominance which are not normally included in tabulations of parton distribution functions. These effects occur for an isoscalar target, and need to be examined. We find [71] effects that are about ten times larger than the errors reported in Ref.[69].