Hierarchy sensitivity of NO$\nu$A in light of T2K $\nu_e$ appearance data

TL;DR

This paper investigates how T2K's electron neutrino appearance data influences NO$ u$A's sensitivity to neutrino mass hierarchy, revealing a bias towards inverted hierarchy and specific $ heta_{CP}$ values.

Contribution

It demonstrates that T2K data biases NO$ u$A hierarchy sensitivity towards inverted hierarchy and lower $ heta_{CP}$ values, especially in unfavorable parameter combinations.

Findings

T2K data favors inverted hierarchy in degenerate solutions.

Addition of T2K data biases NO$ u$A towards IH and lower $ heta_{CP}$.

Hierarchy sensitivity of NO$ u$A is unaffected for favorable parameter combinations.

Abstract

The $\nu_e$ appearance data of T2K experiment has given a glimpse of the allowed parameters in the hierarchy-$\delta_{CP}$ parameter space. In this paper, we explore how this data affects our expectations regarding the hierarchy sensitivity of the NO$\nu$A experiment. For the favourable combinations of hierarchy and $\delta_{CP}$, the hierarchy sensitivity of NO$\nu$A is unaffected by the addition of T2K data. For the unfavourable combinations, NO$\nu$A data gives degenerate solutions. Among these degenerate solutions, T2K data prefers IH and $\delta_{CP}$ in the lower half plane over NH and $\delta_{CP}$ in the upper half plane. Hence, addition of the T2K data to NO$\nu$A creates a bias towards IH and $\delta_{CP}$ in the lower half plane irrespective of what the true combination is.