Reactor Neutrino Experiments with a Large Liquid Scintillator Detector

• Published in: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Main Authors: Kopp, J., Lindner, M., Merle, A., Rolinec, M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Icebreaker
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0011-7E12-3

We discuss several new ideas for reactor neutrino oscillation experiments with a Large Liquid Scintillator Detector. We consider two different scenarios for a measurement of the small mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ with a mobile $\bar{\nu}_e$ source: a nuclear-powered ship, such as a submarine or an icebreaker, and a land-based scenario with a mobile reactor. The former setup can achieve a sensitivity to $\sin^2 2\theta_{13} \lesssim 0.003$ at the 90% confidence level, while the latter performs only slightly better than Double Chooz. Furthermore, we study the precision that can be achieved for the solar parameters, $\sin^2 2\theta_{12}$ and $\Delta m_{21}^2$, with a mobile reactor and with a conventional power station. With the mobile reactor, a precision slightly better than from current global fit data is possible, while with a power reactor, the accuracy can be reduced to less than 1%. Such a precision is crucial for testing theoretical models, e.g. quark-lepton complementarity.