Optimization of neutrino oscillation facilities for large θ13

Journal of High Energy Physics 2012.4 (2012): 089 reproduced by permission of Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)Up to now, future neutrino beam experiments have been designed and optimized in order to look for CP violation, θ13 and the mass hierarchy under the conservative assumption that θ13 is very small. However, the recent results from T2K and MINOS favor a θ13 which could be as large as 8°. In this work, we propose a re-optimization for neutrino beam experiments in case this hint is confirmed. By switching from the first to the second oscillation peak, we find that the CP discovery potential of future oscillation experiments would not only be enhanced, but it would also be less affected by systematic uncertainties. In order to illustrate the effect, we present our results for a Super-Beam experiment, comparing the results obtained at the first and the second oscillation peaks for several values of the systematic errors. We also study its combination with a β-beam facility and show that the synergy between both experiments would also be enhanced due to the larger L/E. Moreover, the increased matter effects at the longer baseline also significantly improve the sensitivity to the mass hierarchyWe acknowledge financial support from the European Community under the European Comission Framework Programme 7, Design Study: EUROnu, Project Number 212372. The EU is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. PC has been supported by Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid, and through projects FPA2009-09017 (DGI del MCyT, Spain) and HEPHACOS S2009/ESP-1473 (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid), as well as from the Spanish Government under the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 programme CUP, Canfranc Underground Physics, project number CSD00C-08-4402