A. Cervera

OSCILLATION PHYSICS WITH A NEUTRINO FACTORY

A generation of neutrino experiments have established that neutrinos mix and probably have mass. The mixing phenomenon points to processes beyond those of the Standard Model, possibly at the Grand Unification energy scale. A extensive sequence of of experiments will be required to measure precisely all the parameters of the neutrino mixing matrix, culminating with the discovery and study of leptonic CP violation. As a first step, extensions of conventional pion/kaon decay beams, such as off-axis beams or low-energy super-beams, have been considered. These could yield first observations of

A large magnetic detector for the neutrino factory

\nu_\mu \to \nu_e

First proof of topological signature in high pressure xenon gas with electroluminescence amplification

transitions at the atmospheric frequency, which have not yet been observed, and a first measurement of

Present Status and Future Perspectives of the NEXT Experiment

\theta_{13}

First proof of topological signature in the high pressure xenon gas TPC with electroluminescence amplification for the NEXT experiment

. Experiments with much better flux control can be envisaged if the neutrinos are obtained from the decays of stored particles. One such possibility is the concept of beta beams provided by the decays of radioactive nuclei, that has been developed within the context of these studies. These would provide a pure (anti-)electron-neutrino beam of a few hundred MeV, and beautiful complementarity with a high-intensity, low-energy conventional beam, enabling experimental probes of T violation as well as CP violation. Ultimately, a definitive and complete set of measurements would offered by a Neutrino Factory based on a muon storage ring. This powerful machine offers the largest reach for CP violation, even for very small values of

Radon and material radiopurity assessment for the NEXT double beta decay experiment

\theta_{13}

Characterisation of NEXT-DEMO using xenon K

.

_{\alpha}

Abstract The physics opportunities of the neutrino factory have been the subject of a number of recent studies. It was shown that sensitive measurements of the angle θ 13 , of MSW effects, and of the sign of the atmospheric mass difference Δ m 23 2 are possible, and even CP violation in the neutrino mixing matrix may be within reach. The focus of interest is the oscillation ν e →ν μ , which leads in the well-defined neutrino beam of the neutrino factory to ‘wrong-sign’ muon events. In this paper, we show that a large magnetic detector will be capable of detecting with high efficiency and small backgrounds such wrong-sign muon events. We present a conceptual design of the apparatus and its performance. Various backgrounds are analysed and we demonstrate that they can be sufficiently suppressed by appropriate cuts. We illustrate the performance of the large magnetic detector by its sensitivity to the angle θ 13 .

X-rays

A bstractThe NEXT experiment aims to observe the neutrinoless double beta decay of 136Xe in a high-pressure xenon gas TPC using electroluminescence (EL) to amplify the signal from ionization. One of the main advantages of this technology is the possibility to reconstruct the topology of events with energies close to Qββ. This paper presents the first demonstration that the topology provides extra handles to reject background events using data obtained with the NEXT-DEMO prototype.Single electrons resulting from the interactions of 22Na 1275 keV gammas and electronpositron pairs produced by conversions of gammas from the 228Th decay chain were used to represent the background and the signal in a double beta decay. These data were used to develop algorithms for the reconstruction of tracks and the identification of the energy deposited at the end-points, providing an extra background rejection factor of 24.3 ± 1.4 (stat.)%, while maintaining an efficiency of 66.7 ± 1.% for signal events.

Baby MIND: A magnetised spectrometer for the WAGASCI experiment

NEXT is an experiment dedicated to neutrinoless double beta decay searches in xenon. The detector is a TPC, holding 100 kg of high-pressure xenon enriched in the 136Xe isotope. It is under construction in the Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc in Spain, and it will begin operations in 2015. The NEXT detector concept provides an energy resolutionbetter than 1% FWHM and a topological signal that can be used to reduce the background. Furthermore, the NEXT technology can be extrapolated to a 1 ton-scale experiment.