KM3NeT/ORCA: status and perspectives for neutrino oscillation and mass hierarchy measurements

TL;DR

KM3NeT/ORCA is a large-scale neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea designed to measure atmospheric neutrino oscillations and determine neutrino mass hierarchy, with additional physics goals including dark matter and sterile neutrinos.

Contribution

This paper presents the status, design, and early data analysis of the ORCA detector, highlighting its capabilities for neutrino oscillation and mass hierarchy measurements.

Findings

Successful deployment of the 4-line configuration.

Initial data shows promising sensitivity to neutrino oscillation parameters.

Potential to resolve the neutrino mass ordering within the next few years.

Abstract

A next-generation neutrino telescope infrastructure, the Kilometer Cube Neutrino Telescope KM3NeT, is currently under construction in the Mediterranean Sea. Its low energy configuration ORCA is optimised for the detection of atmospheric neutrinos with energies above ~1 GeV. The main goal of the ORCA detector is the precise measurement of atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters and the determination of the neutrino mass ordering. The detector is also sensitive to a variety of other physics topics, such as dark matter, non-standard interactions and sterile neutrinos. An overview is presented of the ORCA detector and its research programme, along with early analyses of the data collected with the array in 4-lines configuration.