Speaker
Mr
Joachim Kopp
(Max-Planck Institut fuer Kernphysik, Heidelberg)
Description
We discuss the possibility to study oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos in the
ATLAS experiment at CERN. Due to the large detector mass, a significant number of
events is expected, and during the shutdown phases of the LHC, reconstruction of
these events will be possible with very good energy and angular resolutions. We argue
that 500 live days of neutrino running should be achievable, and that a total of
about 160 contained nu_mu events and about 750 upward going muons could be collected
during this time. Despite the low statistics, the excellent detector resolution will
allow for an unambiguous confirmation of atmospheric neutrino oscillations and for a
measurements of the leading oscillation parameters. Though our simulations show that
the sensitivity of ATLAS is worse than that of dedicated neutrino experiments, we
demonstrate that more sophisticated detectors, e.g. at the ILC, could be highly
competitive with upcoming superbeam experiments, and might even give indications for
the mass hierarchy and for the value of theta_13.
Author
Mr
Joachim Kopp
(Max-Planck Institut fuer Kernphysik, Heidelberg)
