Physics Reach of Atmospheric Neutrino Measurements at PINGU

Abstract

The sensitivity of a huge underground water/ice Cherenkov detector, such as PINGU in IceCube, to the neutrino mass hierarchy, the atmospheric mixing angle and its octant, is studied in detail. Based on the event rate decomposition in the propagation basis, we illustrate the smearing effects from the neutrino scattering, the visible energy and zenith angle reconstruction procedures, the energy and angular resolutions, and the muon mis-identification rate, as well as the impacts of systematic errors in the detector resolutions, the muon mis-identification rate, and the overall normalization. The sensitivity, especially the mass hierarchy sensitivity, can be enhanced by splitting the muon-like events into two channels, according to the event inelasticity. We also show that including the cascade events can improve and stabilize the sensitivity of the measurements.