We present a charged-current quasielastic neutrino-nucleus scattering model based on an unfactorized representation of the spectral function, employing relativistic momentum distributions for bound nucleons and the relativistic distorted-wave impulse approximation with an energy-dependent relativistic potential to describe the scattered nucleon. The model incorporates two-body meson-exchange currents contributing to one-particle-one-hole final states and tests several axial form factor parametrizations, including recent LQCD and MINERvA fits. It is implemented in the NEUT event generator and benchmarked against T2K and MINERvA ${\nu }_{\mu }\text{−}{}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ $\mathrm{CC}0\pi$ measurements. We find that two-body meson-exchange currents lead to a sizeable increase of the total cross section, arising from an enhancement of the transverse response, which is the dominant component in charged-current neutrino scattering. On the other hand, recent fits of the axial form factor predict larger values than the standard dipole form, yielding a systematic enhancement of the cross section. The $\mathrm{LQCD}+\mathrm{MINERvA}$ parametrization tends to overestimate the data, while the MINERvA-only fit provides a more moderate increase. Overall, no single configuration consistently provides the best agreement with the different datasets.

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• Electroweak interactions in nuclear physics
• Lepton induced nuclear reactions
• Neutrino interactions
• Nuclear reactions