We have carefully examined, in both analytical and numerical ways, how small the terrestrial matter effects can be in a given medium-baseline reactor antineutrino oscillation experiment like JUNO or RENO-50. Taking th...We have carefully examined, in both analytical and numerical ways, how small the terrestrial matter effects can be in a given medium-baseline reactor antineutrino oscillation experiment like JUNO or RENO-50. Taking the forthcoming JUNO experiment as an example, we show that the inclusion of terrestrial matter effects may reduce the sensitivity of the neutrino mass ordering measurement by Δχ^2MO≌0.6, and a neglect of such effects may shift the best-fit values of the flavor mixing angle θ12 and the neutrino mass-squared difference Δ21 by about 1σ to 2σ in the future data analysis. In addition, a preliminary estimate indicates that a 2σ sensitivity of establishing the terrestrial matter effects can be achieved for about 10 years of data taking at JUNO with the help of a suitable near detector implementation.展开更多
基金Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(11135009,11305193)the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(XDA10010100)the CAS Center for Excellence in Particle Physics
文摘We have carefully examined, in both analytical and numerical ways, how small the terrestrial matter effects can be in a given medium-baseline reactor antineutrino oscillation experiment like JUNO or RENO-50. Taking the forthcoming JUNO experiment as an example, we show that the inclusion of terrestrial matter effects may reduce the sensitivity of the neutrino mass ordering measurement by Δχ^2MO≌0.6, and a neglect of such effects may shift the best-fit values of the flavor mixing angle θ12 and the neutrino mass-squared difference Δ21 by about 1σ to 2σ in the future data analysis. In addition, a preliminary estimate indicates that a 2σ sensitivity of establishing the terrestrial matter effects can be achieved for about 10 years of data taking at JUNO with the help of a suitable near detector implementation.
