title: Neutrino mass hierarchy and octant determination with atmospheric neutrinos.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: Vernon
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Barger
authors.forename: Raj
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gandhi
authors.forename: Pomita
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ghoshal
authors.forename: Srubabati
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Goswami
authors.forename: Danny
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Marfatia
authors.forename: Suprabh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Prakash
authors.forename: Sushant K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Raut
authors.forename: S Uma
authors.initials: SU
authors.lastname: Sankar