Determining the neutrino mass hierarchy with atmospheric neutrinos

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Publication:877421

DOI10.1016/J.NUCLPHYSB.2006.01.020zbMATH Open1109.81379arXivhep-ph/0511277OpenAlexW2009355147MaRDI QIDQ877421FDOQ877421

Thomas Schwetz, S. T. Petcov

Publication date: 20 April 2007

Published in: Nuclear Physics B (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The possibility to determine the type of neutrino mass hierarchy by studying atmospheric neutrino oscillations with a detector capable to distinguish between neutrino and antineutrino events, such as magnetized iron calorimeters, is considered. We discuss how the ability to distinguish between the neutrino mass spectrum with normal and inverted hierarchy depends on detector characteristics like neutrino energy and direction resolutions or charge miss-identification, and on the systematical uncertainties related to the atmospheric neutrino fluxes. We show also how the neutrino mass hierarchy determination depends on the true values of heta13 and heta23, as well as on the type of the true hierarchy. We find that for mu-like events, an accurate reconstruction of the energy and direction of the neutrino greatly improves the sensitivity to the type of neutrino mass spectrum. For sin22heta13cong0.1 and a precision of 5% in the reconstruction of the neutrino energy and 5circ in the neutrino direction, the type of neutrino mass hierarchy can be identified at the 2sigma C.L. with approximately 200 events. For resolutions of 15% for the neutrino energy and 15circ for the neutrino direction roughly one order of magnitude larger event numbers are required. For a detector capable to distinguish between ue and induced events the requirements on energy and direction resolutions are, in general, less demanding than for a detector with muon charge identification.


Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0511277





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