What we can learn from atmospheric neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of future atmospheric neutrino measurements to determine neutrino properties, including mass hierarchy, mixing angles, and new physics constraints, highlighting their significance for particle physics.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of how atmospheric neutrino observations can be used to measure neutrino parameters and constrain new physics, emphasizing the role of matter effects.

Findings

Neutrino mass hierarchy can be determined with high precision.

Sub-dominant effects driven by Δm^2_21 can be observed.

Large matter effects enable studies of θ_23 deviation and octant.

Abstract

Physics potential of future measurements of atmospheric neutrinos is explored. Observation of $\Delta m^2_{21}$ driven sub-dominant effects and $\theta_{13}$ driven large matter effects in atmospheric neutrinos can be used to study the deviation of $\theta_{23}$ from maximality and its octant. Neutrino mass hierarchy can be determined extremely well due to the large matter effects. New physics can be constrained both in standard atmospheric neutrino experiments as well as in future neutrino telescopes.