Mass hierarchy, 2-3 mixing and CP-phase with Huge Atmospheric Neutrino Detectors

Abstract

We explore the physics potential of multi-megaton scale ice or water Cherenkov detectors with low ($\sim 1$ GeV) threshold. Using some proposed characteristics of the PINGU detector setup we compute the distributions of events versus neutrino energy $E_{\nu }$ and zenith angle ${\theta }_z$, and study their dependence on yet unknown neutrino parameters. The $(E_{\nu }-{\theta }_z)$ regions are identified where the distributions have the highest sensitivity to the neutrino mass hierarchy, to the deviation of the 2-3 mixing from the maximal one and to the CP-phase. We evaluate significance of the measurements of the neutrino parameters and explore dependence of this significance on the accuracy of reconstruction of the neutrino energy and direction. The effect of degeneracy of the parameters on the sensitivities is also discussed. We estimate the characteristics of future detectors (energy and angle resolution, volume, etc.) required for establishing the neutrino mass hierarchy with high confidence level. We find that the hierarchy can be identified at $3\sigma$ -- $10\sigma$ level (depending on the reconstruction accuracies) after 5 years of PINGU operation.

39 pages, 21 figures. Description of Fig.3 corrected

References in corpus (3)

• Neutrino oscillograms of the Earth: effects of 1-2 mixing and CP-violation
• Neutrino mass hierarchy and octant determination with atmospheric neutrinos
• Physics Potential of Future Atmospheric Neutrino Searches

Cited by in corpus (11)

• The Completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Cosmological Implications from two Decades of Spectroscopic Surveys at the Apache Point observatory
• Determining neutrino oscillation parameters from atmospheric muon neutrino disappearance with three years of IceCube DeepCore data
• Neutrino Mass Hierarchy
• Determining the Neutrino Mass Ordering and Oscillation Parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA
• Neutrino oscillations: the rise of the PMNS paradigm
• Enhancing sensitivity to neutrino parameters at INO combining muon and hadron information
• Probing the leptonic Dirac CP-violating phase in neutrino oscillation experiments
• PINGU and the neutrino mass hierarchy: Statistical and systematic aspects
• Towards detecting super-GeV dark matter via annihilation to neutrinos
• Distinctive nuclear signatures of low-energy atmospheric neutrinos
• First study of neutrino angle reconstruction using quasielastic-like interactions in MicroBooNE