Abstract
The precision and discovery potential of a neutrino factory based on muon storage rings is studied. For three-family neutrino oscillations, we analyse how to measure or severely constraint the angle $\theta_{13}$, CP violation, MSW effects and the sign of the atmospheric mass difference $\Delta m^2_{23}$. We present a simple analytical formula for the oscillation probabilities in matter, with all neutrino mass differences non-vanishing, which clarifies the subtleties involved in disentangling the unknown parameters. The appearance of ``wrong-sign muons'' at three reference baselines is considered: 732 km, 3500 km, and 7332 km. We exploit the dependence of the signal on the neutrino energy, and include as well realistic background estimations and detection efficiencies. The optimal baseline turns out to be ${\cal O}(3000$ km). Analyses combining the information from different baselines are also presented.
Highlights
The atmospheric [1,2,3,4,5,6] plus solar [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14] neutrino data point to neutrino oscillations [15,16,17] and can be accommodated in a three-family mixing scenario.A
The corresponding squared mass differences — O(10−5−10−4) eV2 for the large mixing angle MSW solution (LMA–MSW), O(10−6) eV2 for the small mixing angle MSW solution (SMA–MSW), or O(10−10) eV2 for vacuum oscillations (VO) — are significantly below the range deduced from atmospheric observations. We identify this mass difference with m212 in this parametrization
It is uncertain [20] whether solar experiments will determine the sign of m212 if it lies in the LMA–MSW range
Summary
The atmospheric [1,2,3,4,5,6] plus solar [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14] neutrino data point to neutrino oscillations [15,16,17] and can be accommodated in a three-family mixing scenario. The enormous physics reach of such signals in the context of three-family neutrino mixing was first realized in [39], where the authors put the emphasis on the measurement of the angle θ13 and CP-violation (see [40]) The latter may be at reach if the solar deficit corresponds to the LMA–MSW solution [39,41,42]. It has been shown [44] that the precision in the knowledge of the atmospheric parameters θ23 and | m223| can reach the percent level at a neutrino factory, using muon disappearance measurements It was pointed out [43,44] that the sign of m223 can be determined at long baselines, through sizeable matter effects. A preliminary version of this work was presented in [50,51,52]
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