High-$γ$ Beta Beams within the LAGUNA design study

Abstract

Within the LAGUNA design study, seven candidate sites are being assessed for their feasibility to host a next-generation, very large neutrino observatory. Such a detector will be expected to feature within a future European accelerator neutrino programme (Superbeam or Beta Beam), and hence the distance from CERN is of critical importance. In this article, the focus is a $^{18}$Ne and $^{6}$He Beta Beam sourced at CERN and directed towards a 50 kton Liquid Argon detector located at the LAGUNA sites: Slanic (L=1570 km) and Pyhäsalmi (L=2300 km). To improve sensitivity to the neutrino mass ordering, these baselines are then combined with a concurrent run with the same flux directed towards a large Water Čerenkov detector located at Canfranc (L=650 km). This degeneracy breaking combination is shown to provide comparable physics reach to the conservative Magic Baseline Beta Beam proposals. For $^{18}$Ne ions boosted to $γ=570$ and $^{6}$He ions boosted to $γ=350$, the correct mass ordering can be determined at Slanic for all $δ$ when $\sin^{2}2θ_{13}>4\cdot 10^{-3}$ in this combination.

16 pages, 2 figures