Radiative corrections to high-energy neutrino scattering

Motivated by precise neutrino experiments, we reconsider the electromagnetic radiative corrections to the data. We investigate the usefulness and demonstrate the simplicity of the “leading log” approximation: the calculation to order α ln (Q/μ), α ln (Q/m_q). Here Q is an energy scale of the overall process, μ is the lepton mass and m_q is a hadronic mass, the effective quark mass in a parton model. We identify those questions the answers to which do not depend on unknown hadron parameters like quark masses. The leading log radiative corrections to dδ/dy distributions and to suitably interpreted dδ/dx distributions are quark-mass independent. We improve upon the conventional leading log approximation and compute explicitly the largest terms that lie beyond the leading log level. In practice this means that our model-independent formulae, though approximate, are likely to be excellent estimates everywhere except at low energy or very large y. We point out that radiative corrections to measurements of deviations from the Callan-Gross relation and to measurements of the “sea” constituency of nucleons are gigantic. The QCD inspired study of deviations from scaling is of particular interest. We compute, beyond the leading log level, the radiative corrections to the QCD predictions.