No Arabic abstract
Flavour oscillations of sub-GeV atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos, traversing different distances inside the Earth, are a promising source of information on the leptonic CP phase $delta$. In that energy range, the oscillations are very fast, far beyond the resolution of modern neutrino detectors. However, the necessary averaging over the experimentally typical energy and azimuthal angle bins does not wash out the CP violation effects. In this paper we derive very accurate analytic compact expressions for the averaged oscillations probabilities. Assuming spherically symmetric Earth, the averaged oscillation probabilities are described in terms of two analytically calculable effective parameters. Based on those expressions, we estimate maximal magnitude of CP-violation effects in such measurements and propose optimal observables best suited to determine the value of the CP phase in the PMNS mixing matrix.
We present a formalism for the matter effects in the Earth on low energy neutrino fluxes which is both accurate and has all advantages of a full analytic treatment. The oscillation probabilities are calculated up to second order term in $epsilon(x) equiv 2V(x)E/Delta m^2$ where $V(x)$ is the neutrino potential at position $x$. We show the absence of large undamped phases which makes the expansion in $epsilon$ well behaved. An improved expansion is presented in terms of the variation of $V(x)$ around a suitable mean value which allows to treat energies up to those relevant for Supernova neutrinos. We discuss also the case of three-neutrino mixing.
We propose to use the unique event topology and reconstruction capabilities of liquid argon time projection chambers to study sub-GeV atmospheric neutrinos. The detection of low energy recoiled protons in DUNE allows for a determination of the leptonic $CP$-violating phase independent from the accelerator neutrino measurement. Our findings indicate that this analysis can exclude several values of $delta_{CP}$ beyond the $3sigma$ level. Moreover, the determination of the sub-GeV atmospheric neutrino flux will have important consequences in the detection of diffuse supernova neutrinos and in dark matter experiments.
We consider a solution of the atmospheric neutrino problem based on oscillations of muon neutrinos to sterile neutrinos: $ u_{mu}$ $leftrightarrow$ $ u_s$. The zenith angle ($Theta$) dependences of the neutrino and upward-going muon fluxes in presence of these oscillations are studied. The dependences have characteristic form with two dips: at $cos Theta = -0.6 div -0.2$ and $cos Theta = -1.0 div -0.8$. The latter dip is due to parametric resonance in oscillations of neutrinos which cross the core of the earth. A comparison of predictions with data from the MACRO, Baksan and Super-Kamiokande experiments is given.
Measurements of CP--violating observables in neutrino oscillation experiments have been studied in the literature as a way to determine the CP--violating phase in the mixing matrix for leptons. Here we show that such observables also probe new neutrino interactions in the production or detection processes. Genuine CP violation and fake CP violation due to matter effects are sensitive to the imaginary and real parts of new couplings. The dependence of the CP asymmetry on source--detector distance is different from the standard one and, in particular, enhanced at short distances. We estimate that future neutrino factories will be able to probe in this way new interactions that are up to four orders of magnitude weaker than the weak interactions. We discuss the possible implications for models of new physics.
Atmospheric neutrinos travel very long distances through earth matter. It is expected that the matter effects lead to significant changes in the neutrino survival and oscillation probabilities. Initial analysis of atmospheric neutrino data by the Super- Kamiokande collaboration is done using the vacuum oscillation hypothesis, which provided a good fit to the data. In this work, we did a study to differentiate the effects of vacuum oscillations and matter modified oscillations in the atmospheric neutrino data. We find that magnetized iron detector, ICAL at INO, can make a 3 sigma discrimination between vacuum oscillations and matter oscillations, for both normal and inverted hierarchies, in ten years.