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Agarwalla, S. K., Bagchi, P., Forero, D. V., & Tortola, M. (2015). Probing non-standard interactions at Daya Bay. J. High Energy Phys., 07(7), 060–33pp.
Abstract: In this article we consider the presence of neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI) in the production and detection processes of reactor antineutrinos at the Daya Bay experiment. We report for the first time, the new constraints on the flavor non-universal and flavor universal charged-current NSI parameters, estimated using the currently released 621 days of Daya Bay data. New limits are placed assuming that the new physics effects are just inverse of each other in the production and detection processes. With this special choice of the NSI parameters, we observe a shift in the oscillation amplitude without distorting the L/E pattern of the oscillation probability. This shift in the depth of the oscillation dip can be caused by the NSI parameters as well as by theta(13), making it quite difficult to disentangle the NSI effects from the standard oscillations. We explore the correlations between the NSI parameters and theta(13) that may lead to significant deviations in the reported value of the reactor mixing angle with the help of iso-probability surface plots. Finally, we present the limits on electron, muon/tau, and flavor universal (FU) NSI couplings with and without considering the uncertainty in the normalization of the total event rates. Assuming a perfect knowledge of the event rates normalization, we find strong upper bounds similar to 0.1% for the electron and FU cases improving the present limits by one order of magnitude. However, for a conservative error of 5% in the total normalization, these constraints are relaxed by almost one order of magnitude.
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Agarwalla, S. K., Li, T., & Rubbia, A. (2012). An incremental approach to unravel the neutrino mass hierarchy and CP violation with a long-baseline superbeam for large theta(13). J. High Energy Phys., 05(5), 154–32pp.
Abstract: Recent data from long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments have provided new information on theta(13), hinting that 0.01 less than or similar to sin(2) 2 theta(13) less than or similar to 0.1 at 2 sigma confidence level. In the near future, further confirmation of this result with high significance will have a crucial impact on the optimization of the future long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments designed to probe the neutrino mass ordering and leptonic CP violation. In this context, we expound in detail the physics reach of an experimental setup where neutrinos produced in a conventional wide-band beam facility at CERN are observed in a proposed Giant Liquid Argon detector at the Pyhasalmi mine, at a distance of 2290 km. Due to the strong matter effects and the high detection efficiency at both the first and second oscillation maxima, this particular setup would have unprecedented sensitivity to the neutrino mass ordering and leptonic CP violation in the light of the emerging hints of large theta(13). With a 10 to 20 kt 'pilot' detector and just a few years of neutrino beam running, the neutrino mass hierarchy could be determined, irrespective of the true values of delta(CP) and the mass hierarchy, at 3 sigma (5 sigma) confidence level if sin(2) 2 theta(13)(true) = 0.05 (0.1). With the same exposure, we start to have 3 sigma sensitivity to CP violation if sin(2) 2 theta(13)(true) > 0.05, in particular testing maximally CP-violating scenarios at a high confidence level. After optimizing the neutrino and anti-neutrino running fractions, we study the performance of the setup as a function of the exposure, identifying three milestones to have roughly 30%, 50% and 70% coverage in delta(CP) (true) for 3 sigma CP violation discovery. For comparison, we also study the CERN to Slanic baseline of 1540 km. This work nicely demonstrates that an incremental program, staged in terms of the exposure, can achieve the desired physics goals within a realistically feasible timescale, and produce significant new results at each stage.
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LAGUNA-LBNO Collaboration(Agarwalla, S. K., et al), Cervera-Villanueva, A., Gomez-Cadenas, J. J., & Sorel, M. (2014). The mass-hierarchy and CP-violation discovery reach of the LBNO long-baseline neutrino experiment. J. High Energy Phys., 05(5), 094–38pp.
Abstract: The next generation neutrino observatory proposed by the LBNO collaboration will address fundamental questions in particle and astroparticle physics. The experiment consists of a far detector, in its first stage a 20 kt LAr double phase TPC and a magnetised iron calorimeter, situated at 2300 km from CERN and a near detector based on a highpressure argon gas TPC. The long baseline provides a unique opportunity to study neutrino flavour oscillations over their 1st and 2nd oscillation maxima exploring the L/E behaviour, and distinguishing effects arising from delta(CP) and matter. In this paper we have reevaluated the physics potential of this setup for determining the mass hierarchy (MH) and discovering CP-violation (CPV), using a conventional neutrino beam from the CERN SPS with a power of 750 kW. We use conservative assumptions on the knowledge of oscillation parameter priors and systematic uncertainties. The impact of each systematic error and the precision of oscillation prior is shown. We demonstrate that the first stage of LBNO can determine unambiguously the MH to > 5 sigma C.L. over the whole phase space. We show that the statistical treatment of the experiment is of very high importance, resulting in the conclusion that LBNO has similar to 100% probability to determine the MH in at most 4-5 years of running. Since the knowledge of MH is indispensable to extract delta(CP) from the data, the first LBNO phase can convincingly give evidence for CPV on the 3 sigma C.L. using today's knowledge on oscillation parameters and realistic assumptions on the systematic uncertainties.
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Agarwalla, S. K., Huber, P., Tang, J. A., & Winter, W. (2011). Optimization of the Neutrino Factory, revisited. J. High Energy Phys., 01(1), 120–45pp.
Abstract: We perform the baseline and energy optimization of the Neutrino Factory including the latest simulation results on the magnetized iron detector (MIND). We also consider the impact of tau decays, generated by v(mu) -> v(tau) or v(e) -> v(tau) appearance, on the mass hierarchy, CP violation, and theta(13) discovery reaches, which we find to be negligible for the considered detector. For the baseline-energy optimization for small sin(2) 2 theta(13), we qualitatively recover the results with earlier simulations of the MIND detector. We find optimal baselines of about 2 500km to 5 000km for the CP violation measurement, where now values of E-mu as low as about 12 GeV may be possible. However, for large sin(2) 2 theta(13), we demonstrate that the lower threshold and the backgrounds reconstructed at lower energies allow in fact for muon energies as low as 5 GeV at considerably shorter baselines, such as FNAL-Homestake. This implies that with the latest MIND analysis, low-and high-energy versions of the Neutrino Factory are just two different versions of the same experiment optimized for different parts of the parameter space. Apart from a green-field study of the updated detector performance, we discuss specific implementations for the two-baseline Neutrino Factory, where the considered detector sites are taken to be currently discussed underground laboratories. We find that reasonable setups can be found for the Neutrino Factory source in Asia, Europe, and North America, and that a triangular-shaped storage ring is possible in all cases based on geometrical arguments only.
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