KM3NeT-ORCA: Oscillation Research with Cosmics in the Abyss

• Main Author: Coyle, Paschal
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2017
• Subjects: Instrumentation and Detectors physics.ins-det; High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena astro-ph.HE; High Energy Physics - Experiment hep-ex; High Energy Physics - Phenomenology hep-ph; FOS Physical sciences; Orca
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1701.01382; https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.01382

KM3NeT, currently under construction in the abysses of the Mediterranean Sea, is a distributed research infrastructure that will host a km3-scale neutrino telescope (ARCA) for high-energy neutrino astronomy, and a megaton scale detector (ORCA) for neutrino oscillation studies of atmospheric neutrinos. ORCA is optimised for a measurement of the mass hierarchy, providing a sensitivity of 3σ after 3-4 years. It will also measure the atmospheric mixing parameters $Δm_{32}^2$ and $θ_{23}$ with a precision comparable to the NOvA and T2K experiments using both the muon neutrino disappearance and tau neutrino appearance channels. It will provide a measurement of the tau neutrino appearance rate with better than 10% precision, a crucial ingredient for tests of unitarity. It will probe the octant of the mixing angle $θ_{23}$ via matter resonance effects on neutrinos and antineutrinos crossing the core and mantle, which are largely independent on the CP phase. The observation of neutrino oscillations over a wide range of baselines and energies will provide broad sensitivity to new physics such as non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) and sterile neutrinos. : 27th International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics (Neutrino 2016)