• POONAM MEHTA

Articles written in Pramana – Journal of Physics

• Physics potential of the ICAL detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO)

The upcoming 50 kt magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is designed to study the atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos separately over a wide range of energies andpath lengths. The primary focus of this experiment is to explore the Earth matter effects by observing the energy and zenith angle dependence of the atmospheric neutrinos in the multi-GeV range. This study will be crucial toaddress some of the outstanding issues in neutrino oscillation physics, including the fundamental issue of neutrino mass hierarchy. In this document, we present the physics potential of the detector as obtained from realistic detector simulations.We describe the simulation framework, the neutrino interactions in the detector, and the expected responseof the detector to particles traversing it. The ICAL detector can determine the energy and direction of the muons to a high precision, and in addition, its sensitivity to multi-GeV hadrons increases its physics reach substantially. Itscharge identification capability, and hence its ability to distinguish neutrinos from antineutrinos, makes it an efficient detector for determining the neutrino mass hierarchy. In this report, we outline the analyses carried out for the determination of neutrino mass hierarchy and precision measurements of atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters at ICAL, and give the expected physics reach of the detector with 10 years of runtime. We also explore the potential of ICAL for probing new physics scenarios like CPT violation and the presence of magnetic monopoles.

• Imprint of non-standard interactions on the CP violation measurements at long baseline experiments

Neutrino oscillations have been firmly established in the past few decades due to a vast variety of experiments and five of the oscillation parameters (three angles and two mass-squared differences) have been measured to varying degrees of precision. Here the focus is on an important parameter entering the oscillation framework – the leptonic CP-violating phase $\delta$, about which we know very little. We study the consequences of additional CP-conserving and CP-violating parameters in the presence of non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) on CP-violation studies at the upcoming long baseline experiment, Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) and compare the capabilities of DUNE with other experiments.

• # Pramana – Journal of Physics

Current Issue
Volume 93 | Issue 5
November 2019

• # Editorial Note on Continuous Article Publication

Posted on July 25, 2019