XXth International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics
S.Schoenert, T.Lasserre & L.Oberauer
The HLMA Project: Determination of High Delta-m^2 LMA Mixing
Parameters and
Constraint on |U_e3| with a New Reactor Neutrino Experiment
In the forthcoming months, the KamLAND experiment will probe the
parameter space of the solar large mixing angle (LMA) MSW solution as
the origin of the solar neutrino deficit with nuebar's from distant
nuclear reactors. If however the solution realized in nature is such
that Dm2_sol >~ 2 x 10^-4 eV^2 (thereafter named the HLMA region),
KamLAND will only observe a rate suppression but no spectral
distortion and hence it will not have the optimal sensitivity to
measure the mixing parameters. In this case, we propose a new medium
baseline reactor experiment located at Heilbronn (Germany) to pin down
the precise value of the solar mixing parameters. In this paper, we
present the Heilbronn detector site, we calculate the nuebar
interaction rate and the positron spectrum expected from the
surrounding nuclear power plants. We also discuss the sensitivity of
such an experiment to |U_e3| in both normal and inverted neutrino mass
hierarchy scenarios. We then outline the detector design, estimate
background signals induced by natural radioactivity as well as by
in-situ cosmic ray muon interaction, and discuss a strategy to detect
the anti-neutrino signal 'free of background'.
Based on hep-ex/0203013