Probing the neutrino mass ordering with KM3NeT-ORCA: Analysis and perspectives

Abstract

The discrimination of the two possible options for the neutrino mass ordering (normal or inverted) is a major goal for current and future neutrino oscillation experiments. Such goal might be reached by observing high-statistics energy-angle spectra of events induced by atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos propagating in the Earth matter. Large volume water-Cherenkov detectors envisaged to this purpose include the so-called KM3NeT-ORCA project (in seawater) and the IceCube-PINGU project (in ice). Building upon a previous work focused on PINGU, we study in detail the effects of various systematic uncertainties on the ORCA sensitivity to the mass ordering, for the reference configuration with 9 m vertical spacing. We point out the need to control spectral shape uncertainties at the percent level, the effects of better priors on the theta-23 mixing parameter, and the benefits of an improved flavor identification in reconstructed ORCA events.

15 pages, including 7 figures. A few paragraphs and references added. Invited contribution to appear in the JPG Focus Issue on "Neutrino Mass and Mass Ordering"

References in corpus (9)

• Updated fit to three neutrino mixing: exploring the accelerator-reactor complementarity
• Global constraints on absolute neutrino masses and their ordering
• Uncertainties in Atmospheric Neutrino Fluxes
• Neutrino Mass Hierarchy
• Mass hierarchy, 2-3 mixing and CP-phase with Huge Atmospheric Neutrino Detectors
• Neutrino Oscillation Studies with Reactors
• Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiments
• PINGU and the neutrino mass hierarchy: Statistical and systematic aspects
• Mass hierarchy and CP-phase sensitivity of ORCA using Fermilab Neutrino Beam

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Current unknowns in the three neutrino framework
• Neutrino Oscillations in Dark Backgrounds
• Neutrino Mass Ordering at DUNE: an Extra $\nu$-Bonus
• Phenomenological Effects of CPT and Lorentz Invariance Violation in Particle and Astroparticle Physics
• Neutrino Tomography of the Earth with ORCA Detector
• Studying low-$x$ structure function models with astrophysical tau neutrinos: double bang, lollipop and sugardaddy topologies
• JUNO's prospects for determining the neutrino mass ordering