Physics Potential of the ICAL detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO)
Abstract
The upcoming 50 kt magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is designed to study the atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos separately over a wide range of energies and path lengths. The primary focus of this experiment is to explore the Earth matter effects by observing the energy and zenith angle dependence of the atmospheric neutrinos in the multi-GeV range. This study will be crucial to address some of the outstanding issues in neutrino oscillation physics, including the fundamental issue of neutrino mass hierarchy. In this document, we present the physics potential of the detector as obtained from realistic detector simulations. We describe the simulation framework, the neutrino interactions in the detector, and the expected response of the detector to particles traversing it. The ICAL detector can determine the energy and direction of the muons to a high precision, and in addition, its sensitivity to multi-GeV hadrons increases its physics reach substantially. Its charge identification capability, and hence its ability to distinguish neutrinos from antineutrinos, makes it an efficient detector for determining the neutrino mass hierarchy. In this report, we outline the analyses carried out for the determination of neutrino mass hierarchy and precision measurements of atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters at ICAL, and give the expected physics reach of the detector with 10 years of runtime. We also explore the potential of ICAL for probing new physics scenarios like CPT violation and the presence of magnetic monopoles.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1505.07380,
title = {Physics Potential of the ICAL detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO)},
author = {The ICAL Collaboration and Shakeel Ahmed and M. Sajjad Athar and Rashid Hasan and Mohammad Salim and S. K. Singh and S. S. R. Inbanathan and Venktesh Singh and V. S. Subrahmanyam and Shiba Prasad Behera and Vinay B. Chandratre and Nitali Dash and Vivek M. Datar and V. K. S. Kashyap and Ajit K. Mohanty and Lalit M. Pant and Animesh Chatterjee and Sandhya Choubey and Raj Gandhi and Anushree Ghosh and Deepak Tiwari and Ali Ajmi and S. Uma Sankar and Prafulla Behera and Aleena Chacko and Sadiq Jafer and James Libby and K. Raveendrababu and K. R. Rebin and D. Indumathi and K. Meghna and S. M. Lakshmi and M. V. N. Murthy and Sumanta Pal and G. Rajasekaran and Nita Sinha and Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla and Amina Khatun and Poonam Mehta and Vipin Bhatnagar and R. Kanishka and A. Kumar and J. S. Shahi and J. B. Singh and Monojit Ghosh and Pomita Ghoshal and Srubabati Goswami and Chandan Gupta and Sushant Raut and Sudeb Bhattacharya and Suvendu Bose and Ambar Ghosal and Abhik Jash and Kamalesh Kar and Debasish Majumdar and Nayana Majumdar and Supratik Mukhopadhyay and Satyajit Saha and B. S. Acharya and Sudeshna Banerjee and Kolahal Bhattacharya and Sudeshna Dasgupta and Moon Moon Devi and Amol Dighe and Gobinda Majumder and Naba K. Mondal and Asmita Redij and Deepak Samuel and B. Satyanarayana and Tarak Thakore and C. D. Ravikumar and A. M. Vinodkumar and Gautam Gangopadhyay and Amitava Raychaudhuri and Brajesh C. Choudhary and Ankit Gaur and Daljeet Kaur and Ashok Kumar and Sanjeev Kumar and Md. Naimuddin and Waseem Bari and Manzoor A. Malik and Jyotsna Singh and S. Krishnaveni and H. B. Ravikumar and C. Ranganathaiah and Swapna Mahapatra and Saikat Biswas and Subhasis Chattopadhyay and Rajesh Ganai and Tapasi Ghosh and Y. P. Viyogi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.07380},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
139 pages, Physics White Paper of the ICAL (INO) Collaboration, Contents identical with the version published in Pramana - J. Physics