THE LMA MSW SOLUTION OF THE SOLAR NEUTRINO PROBLEM, INVERTED NEUTRINO MASS HIERARCHY AND REACTOR NEUTRINO EXPERIMENTS

作者：S. T. Petcov, M. Piai · 年份：2001 · 被引用次数：122 · 研究领域：Neutrino Physics Research、Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies、Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena

Abstract. In the context of three-neutrino oscillations, we study the possibility of using antineutrinos from nuclear reactors to explore the 10 −4 eV 2 < ∆m 2 ⊙ ∼ < 8 × 10 −4 eV 2 region of the LMA MSW solution of the solar neutrino problem. The KamLAND experiment is not expected to determine ∆m 2 ⊙ if the latter happens to lie in the indicated region. By analysing both the total event rate suppression and the energy spectrum distortion caused by ¯νe oscillations in vacuum, we show that the optimal baseline of such an experiment is L ∼ (20 − 10) km. Furthermore, the same experiment might be used to try to distinguish between the two possible types of neutrino mass spectrum- with normal or with inverted hierarchy, by exploring the effect of interference between the atmospheric- and solar- ∆m 2 driven oscillations. The latter modifies in a characteristic way the energy spectrum of detected events. Distinguishing between the two types of neutrino mass spectrum requires, however, a high precision determination of the atmospheric ∆m 2, a sufficiently large sin 2 θ and a non-maximal sin 2 2θ⊙, where θ and θ ⊙ are the mixing angles respectively limited by the CHOOZ and Palo Verde data and characterizing the solar neutrino oscillations.