Towards a unified description of the electroweak nuclear response
Omar Benhar
INFN and Department of Physics
"Sapienza" Universita` di Roma
I-00185 Roma - Italy
Over the past two decades, the availability of a large body of electron-nucleus scattering data of unprecedented accuracy has triggered the development of highly refined theoretical approaches, based on realistic descriptions of both nuclear structure and the nuclear electromagnetic current, which have proved remarkably successful in explaining the experimental results. The extension of these approaches to the study of neutrino-nucleus interactions is needed to clarify a number of outstanding issues in both neutrino physics and astrophysics. I will discuss the results of recent work, aimed at developing a unified description of neutrino-nucleus interactions in the energy range extending from the few MeV region, relevant to astrophysical applications, to the few GeV region, relevant to long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments.