Neutrino spectroscopy with KARMEN

A general introduction to the KARMEN neutrino experiment and its physics programme is presented. One of its major subjects is the experimental investigation of neutrino-nuclear reactions mediated by both charged current (CC) and neutral current (NC) weak interactions. Cross sections have been measured for ¹²C(ν _e, e^-) ¹²N _g.s., ¹²C(ν _e, e^-) ¹²N^∗, ¹²C(ν, ν′) ¹²C ^∗ (1 ⁺ 1; 15.1 MeV) ( ν = ν _μ, ν _e, overlineν_μ, ¹³C(ν _e, e^-) ¹³N and ⁵⁶Fe(ν _e, e^-) ⁵⁶Co. Quantitative results from these experiments have been deduced for the NC isovector axialvector coupling strength, the NC flavour universality and the nuclear axial charge distribution.