The recent discovery by the Daya-Bay and RENO experiments, that θ(13) is nonzero and relatively large, significantly impacts existing experiments and the planning of future facilities. In many scenarios, the nonzero value of θ(13) implies that θ(23) is likely to be different from π/4. Additionally, large detectors will be sensitive to matter effects on the oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos, making it possible to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy and the octant of θ(23). We show that a 50 kT magnetized liquid argon neutrino detector can ascertain the mass hierarchy with a significance larger than 4σ with moderate exposure times, and the octant at the level of 2-3σ with greater exposure.

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...

We simultaneously investigate source, detector and matter non-standard neutrino interactions at the proposed DUNE experiment. Our analysis is performed using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo exploring the full parameter space. We find that the sensitivity of DUNE to the standard oscillation parameters is worsened due to the presence of non-standard neutrino interactions. In particular, there are degenerate solutions in the leptonic mixing angle θ 23 and the Dirac CP-violating phase δ. We also compute the expected sensitivities at DUNE to the non-standard interaction parameters. We find that the sensitivities to the matter non-standard interaction parameters are substantially stronger than the current bounds (up to a factor of about 15). Furthermore, we discuss correlations between the source/detector and matter non-standard interaction parameters and find a degenerate solution in θ 23 . Finally, we explore the effect of statistics on our results.

One of the unknown parameters in neutrino oscillation studies is the octant of the atmospheric neutrino mixing angle θ 23 . In this paper, we discuss the possibility of determining the octant of θ 23 in the long baseline experiments T2K and NOνA in conjunction with future atmospheric neutrino detectors, in the light of non-zero value of θ 13 measured by reactor experiments. We consider two detector technologies for atmospheric neutrinosmagnetized iron calorimeter and non-magnetized Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber. We present the octant sensitivity for T2K/NOνA and atmospheric neutrino experiments separately as well as the combined sensitivity. For the long baseline experiments, a precise measurement of θ 13 , which can exclude degenerate solutions in the wrong octant, increases the sensitivity drastically. For θ 23 = 39 o and sin 2 2θ 13 = 0.1, at least ∼ 2σ sensitivity can be achieved by T2K + NOνA for all values of δ CP for both normal and inverted hierarchy. For atmospheric neutrinos, the moderately large value of θ 13 measured in the reactor experiments is conducive to octant sensitivity because of enhanced matter effects. A magnetized iron detector can give a 2σ octant sensitivity for 500 kT yr exposure for θ 23 = 39 o , δ CP = 0 and normal hierarchy. This increases to 3σ for both hierarchies by combining with T2K and NOνA. This is due to a preference of different θ 23 values at the minimum χ 2 by T2K/NOνA and atmospheric neutrino experiments. A Liquid Argon type detector for atmospheric neutrinos with the same exposure can give higher octant sensitivity, due to the interplay of muon and electron contributions and superior resolutions. We obtain a ∼ 3σ sensitivity for θ 23 = 39 o for normal hierarchy. This increases to > ∼ 4σ for all values of δ CP if combined with T2K/NOνA. For inverted hierarchy the combined sensitivity is around 3σ.

NOνA experiment has reoptimized its event selection criteria in light of the recently measured moderately large value of θ 13 . We study the improvement in the sensitivity to the neutrino mass hierarchy and to leptonic CP violation due to these new features.For favourable values of δ CP , NOνA sensitivity to mass hierarchy and leptonic CP violation is increased by 20%. Addition of 5 years of neutrino data from T2K to NOνA more than doubles the range of δ CP for which the leptonic CP violation can be discovered, compared to stand alone NOνA. But for unfavourable values of δ CP , the combination of NOνA and T2K are not enough to provide even a 90% C.L. hint of hierarchy discovery. Therefore, we further explore the improvement in the hierarchy and CP violation sensitivities due to the addition of a 10 kt liquid argon detector placed close to NOνA site. The capabilities of such a detector are equivalent to those of NOνA in all respects. We find that combined data from 10 kt liquid argon detector (3 years of ν + 3 years ofν run), NOνA (6 years of ν + 6 years ofν run) and T2K (5 years of ν run) can give a close to 2σ hint of hierarchy discovery for all values of δ CP . With this combined data, we can achieve CP violation discovery at 95% C.L. for roughly 60% values of δ CP .