The Double Chooz Experiment presents an indication of reactor electron antineutrino disappearance consistent with neutrino oscillations. A ratio of 0.944 $pm$ 0.016 (stat) $pm$ 0.040 (syst) observed to predicted events was obtained in 101 days of run
ning at the Chooz Nuclear Power Plant in France, with two 4.25 GW$_{th}$ reactors. The results were obtained from a single 10 m$^3$ fiducial volume detector located 1050 m from the two reactor cores. The reactor antineutrino flux prediction used the Bugey4 measurement as an anchor point. The deficit can be interpreted as an indication of a non-zero value of the still unmeasured neutrino mixing parameter sang. Analyzing both the rate of the prompt positrons and their energy spectrum we find sang = 0.086 $pm$ 0.041 (stat) $pm$ 0.030 (syst), or, at 90% CL, 0.015 $<$ sang $ <$ 0.16.
In early 2010, the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) science collaboration initiated a study to investigate the physics potential of the experiment with a broad set of different beam, near- and far-detector configurations. Nine initial topics
were identified as scientific areas that motivate construction of a long-baseline neutrino experiment with a very large far detector. We summarize the scientific justification for each topic and the estimated performance for a set of far detector reference configurations. We report also on a study of optimized beam parameters and the physics capability of proposed Near Detector configurations. This document was presented to the collaboration in fall 2010 and updated with minor modifications in early 2011.
