The Physics Potential of a Neutrino Beam from Protvino to KM3NeT/ORCA

• Published in: EPJ Web of Conferences
• Main Author: Brunner Jürgen
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: EDP Sciences 2019
• Subjects: Physics; QC1-999; Orca
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201920704001; https://doaj.org/article/f1ab5dbd41664c318778632c151fbd29

The Protvino accelerator facility located in the Moscow region, Russia, is in a good position to offer a rich experimental research program in the field of neutrino physics. Of particular interest is the possibility to direct a neutrino beam from Protvino towards the KM3NeT/ORCA detector which is currently under construction in the Mediterranean sea 40 km offshore Toulon, France. Such an experiment, nicknamed P2O (Protvino-to-ORCA), would yield an unparalleled sensitivity to matter effects in the Earth, allowing for the determination of the neutrino mass ordering with a high level of certainty due to its baseline of 2595 km after only few years of running time at a modest beam intensity up to 100 kW. A second phase of the experiment comprizes a further intensity upgrade of the accelerator complex and a significant densification of the ORCA detector. This would allow for a competitive and complementary measurement of the leptonic CP-violating Dirac phase with a Mton detector but avoiding underground excavation costs.