Neutrino Propagation in Matter

Abstract

We describe the effects of neutrino propagation in the matter of the Earth relevant to experiments with atmospheric and accelerator neutrinos and aimed at the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy and CP violation. These include (i) the resonance enhancement of neutrino oscillations in matter with constant or nearly constant density, (ii) adiabatic conversion in matter with slowly changing density, (iii) parametric enhancement of oscillations in a multilayer medium, and (iv) oscillations in thin layers of matter. We present the results of semianalytic descriptions of flavor transitions for the cases of small density perturbations, in the limit of large densities and for small density widths. Neutrino oscillograms of the Earth and their structure after determination of the 1–3 mixing are described. A possibility to identify the neutrino mass hierarchy with the atmospheric neutrinos and multimegaton scale detectors having low energy thresholds is explored. The potential of future accelerator experiments to establish the hierarchy is outlined.