There and back again: Solar cycle effects in future measurements of low-energy atmospheric neutrinos [CL]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2304.04689


We study the impact of time-dependent solar cycles in the atmospheric neutrino rate at DUNE and Hyper-Kamiokande (HK), focusing in particular on the flux below 1 GeV. Including the effect of neutrino oscillations for the upward-going component that travels through the Earth, we find that across the solar cycle the amplitude of time variation is about $\pm5\%$ at DUNE, and $\pm 1\%$ at HK. At DUNE, the ratio of up/down-going events ranges from 0.45 to 0.85, while at HK, it ranges from 0.75 to 1.5. Over the 11-year solar cycle, we find that the estimated statistical significance for observing time modulation of atmospheric neutrinos is $4.8\sigma$ for DUNE and $2.0\sigma$ for HK. Flux measurements at both DUNE and HK will be important for understanding systematics in the low-energy atmospheric flux as well as for understanding the effect of oscillations in low-energy atmospheric neutrinos.

Read this paper on arXiv…

K. Kelly, P. Machado, N. Mishra, et. al.
Tue, 11 Apr 23
15/63

Comments: 6 pages (including one appendix), 5 figures. Comments welcome