The upcoming 50 kt magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is designed to study the atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos separately over a wide range of energies and path lengths. The primary focus of this experiment is to explore the Earth matter effects by observing the energy and zenith angle dependence of the atmospheric neutrinos in the multi-GeV range. This study will be crucial to address some of the outstanding issues in neutrino oscillation physics, including the fundamental issue of neutrino mass hierarchy. In this document, we present the physics potential of the detector as obtained from realistic detector simulations. We describe the simulation framework, the neutrino interactions in the detector, and the expected response of the detector to particles traversing it. The ICAL detector can determine the energy and direction of the muons to a high precision, and in addition, its sensitivity to multi-GeV hadrons increases its physics reach substantially. Its charge identification capability, and hence its ability to distinguish neutrinos from antineutrinos, makes it an efficient detector for determining the neutrino mass hierarchy. In this report, we outline the analyses carried out for the determination of neutrino mass hierarchy and precision measurements of atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters at ICAL, and give the expected physics reach of the detector with 10 years of runtime. We also explore the potential of ICAL for probing new physics scenarios like CPT violation and the presence of magnetic monopoles. v Physics Potential of ICAL at INO vi PrefaceThe past two decades in neutrino physics have been very eventful, and have established this field as one of the flourishing areas of high energy physics. Starting from the confirmation of neutrino oscillations that resolved the decades-old problems of the solar and atmospheric neutrinos, we have now been able to show that neutrinos have nonzero masses, and different flavors of neutrinos mix among themselves. Our understanding of neutrino properties has increased by leaps and bounds. Many experiments have been constructed and envisaged to explore different facets of neutrinos, in particular their masses and mixing.The Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) experiment at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) [1] is one of the major detectors that is expected to see the light of the day soon. It will have unique features like the ability to distinguish muon neutrinos from antineutrinos at GeV energies, and measure the energies of hadrons in the same energy range. It is therefore well suited for the identification of neutrino mass hierarchy, the measurement of neutrino mixing parameters, and many probes of new physics. The site for the INO has been identified, and the construction is expected to start soon. In the meanwhile, the R&D for the ICAL detector, including the design of its modules, the magnet coils, the active detector elements and the associated electronics, has been underway over the past deca...
Non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) involved in neutrino propagation inside Earth matter could potentially alter atmospheric neutrino fluxes. In this work, we look at the impact of these NSI on the signal at the ICAL detector to be built at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO). We show how the sensitivity to the neutrino mass hierarchy of ICAL changes in the presence of NSI. The mass hierarchy sensitivity is shown to be rather sensitive to the NSI parameters eµ and eτ , while the dependence on µτ and τ τ is seen to be very mild, once the χ 2 is marginalised over oscillation and NSI parameters. If the NSI are large enough, the event spectrum at ICAL is expected to be altered and this can be used to discover new physics. We calculate the lower limit on NSI parameters above which ICAL could discover NSI at a given C.L. from 10 years of data. If NSI were too small, the null signal at ICAL can constrain the NSI parameters. We give upper limits on the NSI parameters at any given C.L. that one is expected to put from 10 years of running of ICAL. Finally, we give C.L. contours in the NSI parameter space that is expected to be still allowed from 10 years of running of the experiment.
The primary advantage of moderately superheated bubble chamber detectors is their simultaneous sensitivity to nuclear recoils from WIMP dark matter and insensitivity to electron recoil backgrounds. A comprehensive analysis of PICO gamma calibration data demonstrates for the first time that electron recoils in C3F8 scale in accordance with a new nucleation mechanism, rather than one driven by a hot-spike as previously supposed. Using this semi-empirical model, bubble chamber nucleation thresholds may be tuned to be sensitive to lower energy nuclear recoils while maintaining excellent electron recoil rejection. The PICO-40L detector will exploit this model to achieve thermodynamic thresholds as low as 2.8 keV while being dominated by single-scatter events from coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering of solar neutrinos. In one year of operation, PICO-40L can improve existing leading limits from PICO on spin-dependent WIMP-proton coupling by nearly an order of magnitude for WIMP masses greater than 3 GeV c −2 and will have the ability to surpass all existing non-xenon bounds on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon coupling for WIMP masses from 3 to 40 GeV c −2 .
The annihilation of Weakly Interactive Massive Particles (WIMP) in the centre of the sun could give rise to neutrino fluxes. We study the prospects of searching for these neutrinos at the upcoming Iron CALorimeter (ICAL) detector to be housed at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO). We perform ICAL simulations to obtain the detector efficiencies and resolutions in order to simulate muon events in ICAL due to neutrinos coming from annihilation of WIMP in the mass range m χ = (3 − 100) GeV. The atmospheric neutrinos pose a major background for these indirect detection studies and can be reduced using the fact that the signal comes only from the direction of the sun. For a given WIMP mass, we find the opening angle θ 90 such that 90 % of the signal events are contained within this angle and use this cone-cut criteria to reduce the atmospheric neutrino background. The reduced background is then weighted by the solar exposure function at INO to obtain the final background spectrum for a given WIMP mass. We perform a χ 2 analysis and present expected exclusion regions in the σ SD − m χ and σ SI − m χ , where σ SD and σ SI are the WIMP-nucleon Spin-Dependent (SD) and Spin-Independent (SI) scattering cross-section, respectively. For a 10 years exposure and m χ = 25 GeV, the expected 90 % C.L. exclusion limit is found to be σ SD < 6.87 × 10 −41 cm 2 and σ SI < 7.75 × 10 −43 cm 2 for the τ + τ − annihilation channel and σ SD < 1.14 × 10 −39 cm 2 and σ SI < 1.30 × 10 −41 cm 2 for the bb channel, assuming 100 % branching ratio for each of the WIMP annihilation channel.
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