We show that a source-to-detector distance of 2540 km offers multiple advantages for a low energy neutrino factory with a detector that can identify muon charge. At this baseline, for any neutrino hierarchy, the wrong-sign muon signal is almost indep
endent of CP violation and $theta_{13}$ in certain energy ranges. This reduces the uncertainties due to these parameters and allows the identification of the hierarchy in a clean way. In addition, part of the muon spectrum is also sensitive to the CP violating phase and $theta_{13}$, so that the same setup can be used to probe these parameters as well.
Renormalization group (RG) evolution of the neutrino mass matrix may take the value of the mixing angle $theta_{13}$ very close to zero, or make it vanish. On the other hand, starting from $theta_{13}=0$ at the high scale it may be possible to genera
te a non-zero $theta_{13}$ radiatively. In the most general scenario with non-vanishing CP violating Dirac and Majorana phases, we explore the evolution in the vicinity of $theta_{13}=0$, in terms of its structure in the complex ${cal U}_{e3}$ plane. This allows us to explain the apparent singularity in the evolution of the Dirac CP phase $delta$ at $theta_{13}=0$. We also introduce a formalism for calculating the RG evolution of neutrino parameters that uses the Jarlskog invariant and naturally avoids this singular behaviour. We find that the parameters need to be extremely fine-tuned in order to get exactly vanishing $theta_{13}$ during evolution. For the class of neutrino mass models with $theta_{13}=0$ at the high scale, we calculate the extent to which RG evolution can generate a nonzero $theta_{13}$, when the low energy effective theory is the standard model or its minimal supersymmetric extension. We find correlated constraints on $theta_{13}$, the lightest neutrino mass $m_0$, the effective Majorana mass $m_{ee}$ measured in the neutrinoless double beta decay, and the supersymmetric parameter $tanbeta$.
