English

A comparative study of long-baseline superbeams within LAGUNA for large $\theta_{13}$

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2012-06-19 v1

Abstract

The Daya Bay and RENO experiments have recently observed a non-zero θ13\theta_{13} at more than 5σ5\sigma CL. This has important consequences for future neutrino oscillation experiments. We analyze these within the LAGUNA design study which considers seven possible locations for a European neutrino observatory for proton decay, neutrino, and astroparticle physics. The megaton-scale detector would be an ideal target for a CERN-based neutrino beam with baselines ranging from 130 km to 2300 km. We perform a detailed study to assess the physics reach of the three detector options - a 440 kton water \v{C}erenkov, a 100 kton liquid argon and a 50 kton liquid scintillator detector - at each of the possible locations, taking into account the recent measurement of θ13\theta_{13}. We study the impact of the beam properties and detector performances on the sensitivity to CP-violation and the mass hierarchy. We find that a liquid argon or water \v{C}erenkov detector can make a 3σ3\sigma discovery of CP violation for 6060%-70% of the parameter space for any of the baselines under consideration, although the results for the liquid argon detector placed at 130 km are slightly worse and only 4040%-50% is achieved in this case. The performance of the liquid scintillator detector is affected by its level of neutral-current background at all baselines. A 3σ3\sigma determination of the mass hierarchy is possible for all values of δ\delta, for the values of θ13\theta_{13} favoured at 3σ3\sigma by Daya Bay and RENO, for almost all setups with L650L\gtrsim 650 km.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.4038,
  title  = {A comparative study of long-baseline superbeams within LAGUNA for large $\theta_{13}$},
  author = {Pilar Coloma and Tracey Li and Silvia Pascoli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.4038},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

32 pages, 10 figures