Determining the Neutrino Mass Ordering and Oscillation Parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA

Abstract

The next generation of water Cherenkov neutrino telescopes in the Mediterranean Sea are under construction offshore France (KM3NeT/ORCA) and Sicily (KM3NeT/ARCA). The KM3NeT/ORCA detector features an energy detection threshold which allows to collect atmospheric neutrinos to study flavour oscillation. This paper reports the KM3NeT/ORCA sensitivity to this phenomenon. The event reconstruction, selection and classification are described. The sensitivity to determine the neutrino mass ordering was evaluated and found to be 4.4 $\sigma$ if the true ordering is normal and 2.3 $\sigma$ if inverted, after three years of data taking. The precision to measure $\Delta m_{32}^2$ and ${\theta }_{23}$ were also estimated and found to be $85\cdot 10^{-6}$ eV${}^2$ and ${(}_{-3.1}^{+1.9}{)}^{\circ }$ for normal neutrino mass ordering and, $75\cdot 10^{-6}$ eV${}^2$ and ${(}_{-7.0}^{+2.0}{)}^{\circ }$ for inverted ordering. Finally, a unitarity test of the leptonic mixing matrix by measuring the rate of tau neutrinos is described. Three years of data taking were found to be sufficient to exclude ${\nu }_{\tau }$ and ${\bar{\nu }}_{\tau }$ event rate variations larger than 20% at $3\sigma$ level.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication at EPJ-C

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