Electron and Neutrino Interactions with Nuclei

Within the ab initio or microscopic framework, nuclear properties emerge from the underlying dynamics of nucleons correlated in pairs and triplets via two- and three-nucleon potentials. External electroweak probes, such as electrons and neutrinos, interact with individual nucleons and clusters of correlated nucleons via many-body electroweak currents. This approach yields a coherent picture of the nucleus and its properties, and indicates that many-nucleon effects are essential to accurately explain the available data in a wide range of energy and momentum transfer. In this talk, I will report on recent progress in ab initio calculations of nuclear electroweak structure and reactions, with emphasis on calculations based on many-nucleon potentials and associated many-body electroweak currents derived from chiral effective field theory.