Study of neutrino oscillation parameters at the INO-ICAL detector using event-by-event reconstruction

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the INO-ICAL detector's ability to measure neutrino oscillation parameters using detailed event reconstruction, demonstrating its potential to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy with significant confidence.

Contribution

First application of full event-by-event reconstruction in measuring atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters at INO-ICAL, providing realistic performance estimates.

Findings

Achieves a mean resolution of Δχ² ≈ 2.9 for hierarchy determination.

Can rule out the wrong mass hierarchy at about 1.7σ significance.

Results align with previous approximate performance studies.

Abstract

We present the reach of the proposed INO-ICAL in measuring the atmospheric-neutrino-oscillation parameters $\theta_{23}$ and $\Delta m^2_{32}$ using full event-by-event reconstruction for the first time. We also study the fluctuations in the data and their effect on the precision measurements and mass-hierarchy analysis for a five-year exposure of the 50 kton ICAL detector. We find a mean resolution of $\Delta\chi^2 \approx 2.9$, which rules out the wrong mass hierarchy of the neutrinos with a significance of approximately $1.7\sigma$. These results are similar to those to presented earlier studies that approximated the performance of the ICAL detector.