Final-state interactions in the superscaling analysis of neutral-current quasielastic neutrino scattering

Effects of strong final-state interactions in the superscaling properties of neutral-current quasielastic neutrino cross sections are investigated by using the relativistic impulse approximation as guidance. First- and second-kind scaling are analyzed for neutrino beam energies ranging from 1 to 2 GeV for the cases of C-12, O-16, and Ca-40. Different detection angles of the outgoing nucleon are considered to sample various nucleon energy regimes. Scaling of the second kind is shown to be very robust. The validity of first-kind scaling is found to be linked to the kinematics of the process. Superscaling still prevails even in the presence of very strong final-state interactions, provided that some kinematical restrains are kept, and the conditions under which superscaling can be applied to predict neutral-current quasielastic neutrino scattering are determined.