PHYSICS POTENTIAL OF A 2540 km BASELINE SUPERBEAM EXPERIMENT

Abstract

We study the physics potential of a neutrino superbeam experiment with a 2540 km baseline. We assume a neutrino beam similar to the NuMI beam in medium energy configuration. We consider a 100 kton totally active scintillator detector at a 7 mr off-axis location. We find that such a configuration has outstanding hierarchy discriminating capability. In conjunction with the data from the present reactor neutrino experiments, it can determine the neutrino mass hierarchy at 3σ level in less than 5 years, if sin22θ13≥0.01, running in the neutrino mode alone. As a stand alone experiment, with a five-year neutrino run and a five-year anti-neutrino run, it can determine nonzero θ13 at 3σ level if sin22θ13≥7×10-3 and hierarchy at 3σ level if sin22θ13≥8×10-3. This data can also distinguish δ CP = π/2 from the CP conserving values of 0 and π, for sin22θ13≥0.02.