Prospects of accelerator and reactor neutrino oscillation experiments for the coming ten years

Abstract

We analyze the physics potential of long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments planned for the coming ten years, where the main focus is the sensitivity limit to the small mixing angle $\theta_{13}$. The discussed experiments include the conventional beam experiments MINOS, ICARUS, and OPERA, which are under construction, the planned superbeam experiments J-PARC to Super-Kamiokande and NuMI off-axis, as well as new reactor experiments with near and far detectors, represented by the Double-Chooz project. We perform a complete numerical simulation including systematics, correlations, and degeneracies on an equal footing for all experiments using the GLoBES software. After discussing the improvement of our knowledge on the atmospheric parameters $\theta_{23}$ and $\Delta m^2_{31}$ by these experiments, we investigate the potential to determine $\theta_{13}$ within the next ten years in detail. Furthermore, we show that under optimistic assumptions and for $\theta_{13}$ close to the current bound, even the next generation of experiments might provide some information on the Dirac CP phase and the type of the neutrino mass hierarchy.