Nuclear effects in neutral current quasi-elastic neutrino interactions

The interpretation of the charged (CCQE) and neutral (NCE) current quasi elastic events collected by the MiniBooNE Collaboration involves a number of unresolved issues. While it has been suggested that the data can be explained in terms of an effective nucleon axial mass, MA, the results of our theoretical calculations suggest that the CCQE and NCE samples cannot be described by the same value of MA. We argue that the disagreement between theory and data may arise from the uncertainties associated with the flux average procedure. We also analyze the role of the strange quark in NCE interactions and find that, due to a cancellation between proton and neutron contributions, it turns out to be negligible.