Matter versus vacuum oscillations at long-baseline accelerator neutrino experiments

Abstract

The neutrino oscillation probabilities at the long-baseline accelerator neutrino experiments are expected to be modified by matter effects. We search for evidence of such modification in the data of T2K and NO[Formula: see text]A, by fitting the data to the hypothesis of (a) matter modified oscillations and (b) vacuum oscillations. We find that vacuum oscillations provide as good a fit to the data as matter modified oscillations. Even extended runs of T2K and NO[Formula: see text]A, with five years in neutrino mode [Formula: see text] and five years in anti-neutrino mode [Formula: see text], cannot make a [Formula: see text] distinction between vacuum and matter modified oscillations. The future experiment DUNE, with neutrino and anti-neutrino runs of five years each [Formula: see text], can rule out vacuum oscillations by itself at [Formula: see text] if the hierarchy is normal. If the hierarchy is inverted, a [Formula: see text] discrimination against vacuum oscillations requires the combination of [Formula: see text] runs of T2K, NO[Formula: see text]A and DUNE.