The silver channel at the Neutrino Factory

Abstract

We notice that looking for $\nu_e \to \nu_\tau$ at the same time as $\nu_e \to \nu_\mu$ oscillations could significantly help to reduce the errors in the leptonic CP-violating phase $\delta$ measurement. We show how the $\nu_e \to \nu_\mu$ (``golden'') and $\nu_e \to \nu_\tau$ (``silver'') transitions observed at an OPERA-like 2 Kton lead-emulsion detector at L = 732 Km, in combination with the $\nu_e \to \nu_\mu$ transitions observed at a 40 Kton magnetized iron detector with a baseline of L = 3000 Km, strongly reduce the so-called $(\theta_{13}, \delta)$ ambiguity. We also show how a moderate increase in the OPERA-like detector mass (4 Kton instead of 2 Kton) completely eliminates the clone regions even for small values of $\theta_{13}$.