PT Journal
AU Ternes, CA
   Gariazzo, S
   Hajjar, R
   Mena, O
   Sorel, M
   Tortola, M
TI Neutrino mass ordering at DUNE: An extra nu bonus
SO Physical Review D
JI Phys. Rev. D
PY 2019
BP 093004
EP 10pp
VL 100
IS 9
DI 10.1103/PhysRevD.100.093004
LA English
AB We study the possibility of extracting the neutrino mass ordering at the future Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment using atmospheric neutrinos, which will be available before the muon neutrino beam starts being operational. The large statistics of the atmospheric muon neutrino and antineutrino samples at the far detector, together with the baselines of thousands of kilometers that these atmospheric (anti) neutrinos travel, provide ideal ingredients to extract the neutrino mass ordering via matter effects in the neutrino propagation through Earth. Crucially, muon capture by argon provides excellent charge tagging, allowing us to disentangle the neutrino and antineutrino signature. This is an important extra benefit of having a liquid argon time projection chamber as a far detector, that could render an similar to 3.5 sigma extraction of the mass ordering after approximately 7 yr of exposure.
ER