Analytical description of CP violation in oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos traversing the Earth

Abstract

Flavour oscillations of sub-GeV atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos, traversing different distances inside the Earth, are a promising source of information on the leptonic CP phase $\hat{I}´$. In that energy range, the oscillations are very fast, far beyond the resolution of modern neutrino detectors. However, the necessary averaging over the experimentally typical energy and azimuthal angle bins does not wash out the CP violation effects. In this paper we derive very accurate analytic compact expressions for the averaged oscillations probabilities. Assuming spherically symmetric Earth, the averaged oscillation probabilities are described in terms of two analytically calculable effective parameters. Based on those expressions, we estimate maximal magnitude of CP-violation effects in such measurements and propose optimal observables best suited to determine the value of the CP phase in the PMNS mixing matrix.

Extended version accepted for publication in JHEP (antineutrino oscillations included); 27 pages, 12 figures