NuTag: proof-of-concept study for a long-baseline neutrino beam

Abstract

The study of neutrino oscillation at accelerators is limited by systematic uncertainties, in particular on the neutrino flux, cross-section, and energy estimates. These systematic uncertainties could be eliminated by a novel experimental technique: neutrino tagging. This technique relies on a new type of neutrino beamline and its associated instrumentation which would enable the kinematical reconstruction of the neutrinos produced in $\pi^{\pm} \to \mu^{\pm} \nu_\mu$ and $K^{\pm} \to \mu^{\pm} \nu_\mu$ decays. This article presents a proof-of-concept study for such a tagged beamline, aiming to serve a long baseline neutrino experiment exploiting a megaton scale natural water Cherenkov detector. After optimizing the target and the beamline optics to first order, a complete Monte Carlo simulation of the beamline has been performed. The results show that the beamline provides a meson beam compatible with the operation of the spectrometer, and delivers a neutrino flux sufficient to collect neutrino samples with a size comparable with similar experiments and with other un-tagged long-baseline neutrino experimental proposals.