Detecting atmospheric neutrino oscillations in the ATLAS detector at CERN

Joachim Kopp, Manfred Lindner

Published 2007-05-17, updated 2007-11-16Version 2

We discuss the possibility to study oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos in the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Due to the large total detector mass, a significant number of events is expected, and during the shutdown phases of the LHC, reconstruction of these events will be possible with very good energy and angular resolutions, and with charge identification. We argue that 500 live days of neutrino running could be achieved, and that a total of ~160 contained \nu_\mu events and ~360 upward going muons could be collected during this time. Despite the low statistics, the excellent detector resolution will allow for an unambiguous confirmation of atmospheric neutrino oscillations and for measurements of the leading oscillation parameters. Though our detailed simulations show that the sensitivity of ATLAS is worse than that of dedicated neutrino experiments, we demonstrate that more sophisticated detectors, e.g. at the ILC, could be highly competitive with upcoming superbeam experiments, and might even give indications for the mass hierarchy and for the value of theta-13.