A new approach to anti-neutrino running in long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments

TL;DR

This paper proposes using low-energy anti-neutrinos from muon decay at rest in long baseline experiments, enabling inverse beta decay detection and significantly improving sensitivity to CP violation and theta_13.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of anti-neutrino production and detection in long baseline experiments, enhancing measurement capabilities for key neutrino parameters.

Findings

Five times larger anti-neutrino event sample

Improved sensitivity to CP violation and theta_13

Mass hierarchy measurement remains effective

Abstract

We study the possibility to replace the anti-neutrino run of a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment, with anti-neutrinos from muon decay at rest. The low energy of these neutrinos allows the use of inverse beta decay for detection in a Gadolinium-doped water Cerenkov detector. We show that this approach yields a factor of five times larger anti-neutrino event sample. The resulting discovery reaches in theta_13, the mass hierarchy and leptonic CP violation are compared with those from a conventional superbeam experiment with combined neutrino and anti-neutrino running. We find that this approach yields a greatly improved reach for CP violation and theta_13 while leaving the ability to measure the mass hierarchy intact.