The earth matter effects in neutrino oscillation experiments from Tokai to Kamioka and Korea

TL;DR

This study analyzes earth matter effects on neutrino oscillations in the T2KK experiment, highlighting the impact of matter density uncertainties and the benefits of neutrino-antineutrino running modes for determining neutrino mass hierarchy.

Contribution

It provides a detailed geophysical analysis of earth matter effects and assesses their influence on neutrino oscillation measurements in the T2KK experiment.

Findings

Average matter densities along baselines are 2.6 to 3.05 g/cm^3.

Matter density uncertainty is about 6%, affecting oscillation probabilities.

Splitting beam time into neutrino and anti-neutrino modes enhances mass hierarchy sensitivity.

Abstract

We study the earth matter effects in the Tokai-to-Kamioka-and-Korea experiment (T2KK), which is a proposed extension of the T2K (Tokai-to-Kamioka) neutrino oscillation experiment between J-PARC at Tokai and Super-Kamiokande (SK) in Kamioka, where an additional detector is placed in Korea along the same neutrino beam line.By using recent geophysical measurements, we examine the earth matter effects on the oscillation probabilities at Kamioka and Korea. The average matter density along the Tokai-to-Kamioka baseline is found to be 2.6 g/cm^3, and that for the Tokai-to-Korea baseline is 2.85, 2.98, and 3.05 g/cm^3 for the baseline length of L = 1000, 1100, and 1200 km, respectively. The uncertainty of the average density is about 6%, which is determined by the uncertainty in the correlation between the accurately measured sound velocity and the matter density. The effect of the matter density distribution along the baseline is studied by using the step function approximation and the Fourier analysis. We find that the nu_mu -> nu_e oscillation probability is dictated mainly by the average matter density, with small but non-negligible contribution from the real part of the first Fourier mode. We also find that the sensitivity of the T2KK experiment on the neutrino mass hierarchy does not improve significantly by reducing the matter density error from 6% to 3%, since the measurement is limited by statistics for the minimum scenario of T2KK with SK at Kamioka anda 100 kt detector in Korea considered in this report. The sensitivity of the T2KK experiment on the neutrino mass hierarchy improves significantly by splitting the total beam time into neutrino and anti-neutrino runs, because the matter effect term contributes to the oscillation amplitudes with the opposite sign.