Nuclear effects in electron-nucleus and neutrino-nucleus scattering within a relativistic quantum mechanical framework

12 pags., 14 figs., 2 apps.We study the impact of the description of the knockout nucleon wave function on electron- and neutrino-induced quasielastic and single-pion production cross sections. We work in a fully relativistic and quantum mechanical framework, where the relativistic mean-field model is used to describe the target nucleus. The focus is on Pauli blocking and the distortion of the final nucleon; these two nuclear effects are separated and analyzed in detail. We find that a proper quantum mechanical treatment of these effects is crucial to provide the correct magnitude and shape of the inclusive cross section. Also, this seems to be key to predict the right ratio of muon-neutrino to electron-neutrino cross sections at very forward scattering angles.This work was partially supported by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme initiated by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BriX network P7/12) and the Research Foundation Flanders (FWOFlanders) and Special Research Fund, Ghent University; and by Spanish Government (FPA2015-65035-P) and Comunidad de Madrid (B2017/BMD-3888 PRONTO-CM) and European Regional Funds. R.G.J. acknowledges support by Comunidad de Madrid and Universidad Complutense de Madrid under Contract No. 2017-T2/TIC-5252. The computations of this work were performed in EOLO, the HPC of Climate Change of the International Campus of Excellence of Moncloa, funded by MECD and MICINN as a contribution to CEI Moncloa; the high capacity cluster for physics, funded by UCM and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) funds, CEI Moncloa; and the Stevin Supercomputer Infrastructure provided by Ghent University, the Hercules Foundation, Flanders, Belgium, and the Flemish Government