Neutrino mass hierarchy determination and other physics potential of medium-baseline reactor neutrino oscillation experiments

Abstract

Medium-baseline reactor neutrino oscillation experiments (MBRO) have been proposed to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy (MH) and to make precise measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters. With sufficient statistics, better than ~3%/\sqrt{E} energy resolution and well understood energy non-linearity, MH can be determined by analyzing oscillation signals driven by the atmospheric mass-squared difference in the survival spectrum of reactor antineutrinos. With such high performance MBRO detectors, oscillation parameters, such as \sin^22θ_{12}, Δm^2_{21}, and Δm^2_{32}, can be measured to sub-percent level, which enables a future test of the PMNS matrix unitarity to ~1% level and helps the forthcoming neutrinoless double beta decay experiments to constrain the allowed <m_{ββ}> values. Combined with results from the next generation long-baseline beam neutrino and atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments, the MH determination sensitivity can reach higher levels. In addition to the neutrino oscillation physics, MBRO detectors can also be utilized to study geoneutrinos, astrophysical neutrinos and proton decay. We propose to start a U.S. R&D program to identify, quantify and fulfill the key challenges essential for the success of MBRO experiments.

Submitted to the Snowmass 2013 proceedings; 21 pages and 11 figures

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Cited by in corpus (18)

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• Neutrino mass hierarchy and electron neutrino oscillation parameters with one hundred thousand reactor events
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• Neutrino Oscillation Studies with Reactors
• On the Bayesian approach to neutrino mass ordering
• Constraining Super-light Sterile Neutrino Scenario by JUNO and RENO-50
• Advantages of Multiple Detectors for the Neutrino Mass Hierarchy Determination at Reactor Experiments
• Studying the neutrino wave-packet effects at medium-baseline reactor neutrino oscillation experiments and the potential benefits of an extra detector
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• Neutrino Physics Now and in the Near Future
• Confidence in the neutrino mass hierarchy
• Measuring theta12 Despite an Uncertain Reactor Neutrino Spectrum
• A comment on estimating sensitivity to neutrino mass hierarchy in neutrino experiments