High-precision measurement of atmospheric mass-squared splitting with T2K and NOvA
arXiv:1312.1477
Abstract
A precise measurement of the atmospheric mass-squared splitting |Δm^2_{μμ}| is crucial to establish the three-flavor paradigm and to constrain the neutrino mass models. In addition, a precise value of |Δm^2_{μμ}| will significantly enhance the hierarchy reach of future medium-baseline reactor experiments like JUNO and RENO-50. In this work, we explore the precision in |Δm^2_{μμ}| that will be available after the full runs of T2K and NOvA. We find that the combined data will be able to improve the precision in |Δm^2_{μμ}| to sub-percent level for maximal 2-3 mixing. Depending on the true value of \sin^2θ_{23} in the currently-allowed 3 sigma range, the precision in |Δm^2_{μμ}| will vary from 0.87% to 1.24%. We further demonstrate that this is a robust measurement as it remains almost unaffected by the present uncertainties in θ_{13}, δ_{CP}, the choice of mass hierarchy, and the systematic errors.
12 pages, 11 pdf figures, 2 tables