A Critical Appraisal of Some Concepts Used in Neutrino Physics

We examine the value of certain concepts highly regarded in the past decade, that concern neutrino propagation, models for the leptonic mixing, interpretations of neutrinoless double beta dec\ ay and of SN1987A observations. We argue that it would useful to strengthen the role of the discussions among experts of neutrino physics, regarding the hypotheses underlying the theoretical investigations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Presented at IFAE 201

Neutrino mass bound in the standard scenario for supernova electronic antineutrino emission

Based on recent improvements of the supernova electron antineutrino emission model, we update the limit on neutrino mass from the SN1987A data collected by Kamiokande-II, IMB and Baksan. We derive the limit of 5.8 eV at 95 % CL, that we show to be remarkably insensitive to the astrophysical uncertainties. Also we evaluate the ultimate mass sensitivity of this method for a detector like Super-Kamiokande. We find that the bound lies in the sub-eV region, 0.8 eV at 95 % CL being a typical outcome, competitive with the values that are presently probed in laboratory. However, this bound is subject to strong statistical fluctuations, correlated to the characteristics of the first few events detected. We briefly comment on the prospects offered by future detectors.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physic

Counting muons to probe the neutrino mass spectrum

The experimental evidence that \theta_{13} is large opens new opportunities to identify the neutrino mass spectrum. We outline a possibility to investigate this issue by means of conventional technology. The ideal setup turns out to be long baseline experiment: the muon neutrino beam, with 10^{20} protons on target, has an average energy of 6 (8) GeV; the neutrinos, after propagating 6000 (8000) km, are observed by a muon detector of 1 Mton and with a muon energy threshold of 2 GeV. The expected number of muon events is about 1000, and the difference between the two neutrino spectra is sizeable, about 30%. This allows the identification of the mass spectrum just counting muon tracks. The signal events are well characterized experimentally by their time and direction of arrival, and 2/3 of them are in a region with little atmospheric neutrino background, namely, between 4 GeV and 10 GeV. The distances from CERN to Baikal Lake and from Fermilab to KM3NET, or ANTARES, fit in the ideal range.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. Version accepted for publication on EPJ

The diffuse supernova neutrino background: Expectations and uncertainties derived from SN1987A

Context: The detection of the diffuse supernova neutrino background may be imminent, but theoretical predictions are affected by substantial uncertainties. AIMS. We calculate the signal and its uncertainty with the present configuration of Super-Kamiokande and consider the possibility of lowering the threshold by means of gadolinium loading. Methods: We model neutrino emission following the analysis of SN1987A by Pagliaroli and collaborators 2009 and use the number of expected events in the neutrino detector as a free parameter of the fit. The best-fit value of this parameter and its error are evaluated by means of standard maximum likelihood procedures, taking into account properly the correlations. Results: The uncertainties in the astrophysics of the emission dominates the total uncertainty in the expected signal rate, which conservatively ranges from 0.3 to 0.9 events per year and from 1.1 to 2.9 with gadolinium.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, to appear in A&

Double pulses and cascades above 2 PeV in IceCube

IceCube collaboration has seen an unexpected population of high energy neutrinos compatible with an astrophysical origin. We consider two categories of events that can help to diagnose cosmic neutrinos: double pulse, that may allow us to clearly discriminate the cosmic component of tau neutrinos; cascades with deposited energy above 2 PeV, including events produced by electron antineutrinos at the Glashow resonance, that can be used to investigate the neutrino production mechanisms. We show that one half of the double pulse signal is due to the neutrinos spectral region already probed by IceCube. By normalizing to HESE data, we find that 10 more years are required to obtain 90% probability to observe a double pulse. The cascades above 2 PeV provide us a sensitive probe of the high energy tail of the neutrino spectrum and are potentially observable, but even in this case, the dependence on type of the source is mild. In fact we find that pp or p{\gamma} mechanisms give a difference in the number of cascades above 2 PeV of about 25 % that can be discriminated at 2{\sigma} in about 50 years of data taking.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in EPJ