Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering on 40Ar from first principles

Coherent elastic neutrino scattering on the Ar-40 nucleus is computed with coupled-cluster theory based on nuclear Hamiltonians inspired by effective field theories of quantum chromodynamics. Our approach is validated by calculating the charge form factor and comparing it to data from electron scattering. We make predictions for the weak form factor, the neutron radius, and the neutron skin and estimate systematic uncertainties. The neutron-skin thickness of Ar-40 is consistent with results from density-functional theory. Precision measurements from coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering could potentially be used to extract these observables and help to constrain nuclear models.