Optimizing the greenfield Beta-beam

Abstract

We perform a comprehensive and detailed comparison of the physics reach of Beta-beam neutrino experiments between two pairs of plausible source ions, (8B, 8Li) and (18Ne, 6He). We study the optimal choices for the baseline, boost factor, and luminosity. We take a 50 kton iron calorimeter, a la ICAL@INO, as the far detector. We follow two complementary approaches for our study: \begin{enumerate} \renewcommand\labelenumi{(\roman{enumi})} \item Fixing the number of useful ion decays and boost factor of the beam, and optimizing for the sensitivity reach between the two pairs of ions as a function of the baseline. \item Matching the shape of the spectrum between the two pairs of ions, and studying the requirements for baseline, boost factor, and luminosity. \end{enumerate} We find that for each pair of ions there are two baselines with very good sensitivity reaches: a short baseline with L [km]/γ 2.6 (8B+8Li) and L [km]/γ 0.8 (18Ne+6He), and a long ``magic'' baseline. For γ ~ 500, one would optimally use 18Ne and 6He at the short baseline for CP violation, 8B and 8Li at the magic baseline for the mass hierarchy, and either 18Ne and 6He at the short baseline or 8B and 8Li at the magic baseline for the sin22θ13 discovery.