Neutrino parameters with magical beta-beam at INO

We have studied the physics reach of an experiment where neutrinos produced in a beta-beam facility at CERN are observed in a large magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO). The idea of beta-beam is based on the production of a pure, intense, collimated beam of electron neutrinos or their antiparticles via the beta decay of accelerated radioactive ions circulating in a storage ring. Interestingly, the CERN-INO distance of 7152 km happens to be tantalizingly close to the so-called 'magic' baseline where the sensitivity to the neutrino mass ordering (sign of Δm231≡m23-m21) and more importantly, θ13, goes up significantly, while the sensitivity to the unknown CP phase is absent. This permits such an experiment involving the golden Peμ channel to make precise measurements of the mixing angle θ13 and neutrino mass hierarchy avoiding the issues of intrinsic degeneracies and correlations which plague other baselines