Physics Potential of SPS Upgrade in regard to Beta/EC Beams

Abstract

The goal for future neutrino facilities is the determination of the $[U_{e3}]$ mixing and CP violation in neutrino oscillations. This will require precision experiments with a very intense neutrino source. With this objective the creation of neutrino beams from the radioactive decay of boosted ions by the SPS of CERN from either beta or electron capture transitions has been propossed. We discuss the capabilities of such facilities as a function of the energy of the boost and the baseline for the detector. We conclude that the SPS upgrade to 1000 GeV is crucial to have a better sensitivity to CP violation if it is accompanied by a longer baseline. We compare the physics potential for two different configurations. In the case of beta beams, with the same boost for both $β^+$ (neutrinos) and $β^-$ (antineutrinos), the two setups are: I) $γ=120$, L=130 Km (Frejus); II) $γ=330$, L=650 Km (Canfranc). In the case of monochromatic EC beams we exploit the energy dependence of neutrino oscillations to separate out the two parameters $U(e3)$ and the CP phase $δ$. Setup I runs at $γ=90$ and $γ=195$ (maximum achievable at present SPS) to Frejus, whereas Setup II runs at $γ=195$ and $γ=440$ (maximum achievable at upgraded SPS) to Canfranc. The main conclusion is that, whereas the gain in the determination of $U(e3)$ is rather modest, setup II provides much better sensitivity to CP violation.