The race for theta_13: Reactor versus Superbeam Neutrino Experiments

por Thomas Schwetz (Technical University Munich)

martes 27 may. 2003 12:30 → 13:30 Europe/Madrid

Sala Seminarios IFIC (Edf. Institutos de Investigación)

The strong evidences for neutrino oscillations from atmospheric, solar and the KamLAND neutrino experiments imply that two out of the three leptonic mixing angles are large. For the third mixing angle, theta_{13}, currently only an upper bound from the CHOOZ experiment exits. The next step towards a full understanding of the neutrino sector will be a measurement of this third angle. In this talk the possibility to measure theta_{13} with a future reactor neutrino oscillation experiment consisting of a near and far detector is discussed. Taking into account various systematical errors it is shown that reaching a sensitivity for sin^2 2 theta_{13} down to 0.01 may be possible with such an experiment. This shows that reactor neutrino experiments are highly competitive to the planned first-generation superbeam experiments in testing theta_{13}. On the other hand, due to the complementarity of the two types of experiments a combination of a KamLAND-size reactor experiment with one or two superbeams could substantially improve the ability to obtain information on the type of the neutrino mass hierarchy or the leptonic CP phase.