Matter Effects on Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiments

We calculate matter effects on neutrino oscillations relevant for long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. In particular, we compare the results obtained with simplifying approximations for the density profile in the Earth versus results obtained with actual density profiles. We study the dependence of the oscillation signals on both $E/\Delta m^2_{atm.}$ and on the angles in the leptonic mixing matrix. The results show quantitatively how matter effects can cause significant changes in the oscillation signals, relative to vacuum oscillations and can be useful in amplifying these signals and helping one to obtain measurements of mixing parameters and the magnitude and sign of $\Delta m^2$.Comment: 6 pages, Latex, with 13 postscript figures. Talk given by I. Mocioiu at the Workshop on the Next Generation Nucleon Decay and Neutrino Detector NNN99, Stony Brook, Sept. 1999 Journal-ref To appear in the conference proceedings (A.I.P.), some figures replote

Limits on the Non-commutativity Scale

A non-vanishing vacuum expectation value for an antisymmetric tensor field leads to the violation of Lorentz invariance, controlled by the dimension (-2) parameter, theta_{mu nu}. We assume that the zeroth order term in theta-expansion represents the Standard Model and study the effects induced by linear terms in theta_{mu nu}. If coupling to theta_{mu nu} is realized in strongly interacting sector of the theory, the clock comparison experiments place the limit on the possible size of this background at the level of 1/\sqrt{theta}>~5X10^{14} GeV. If the interaction with theta_{mu nu} is initially present only in the QED sector, this limit can be relaxed to 10^{11}-10^{12} GeV level. The strength of these limits obviates the inferiority of collider physics with regard to experimental checks of Lorentz invariance. Limits of similar strength are expected to hold in the case of mixed non-commutativity between four-dimensional and extra-dimensional coordinates. We also show that in certain models mixed non-commutativity can be interpreted as 4d CPT-violating background.Comment: 5 pages, Talk presented by Irina Mocioiu at CPT01, Bloomington, Indiana, August 200

Oscillation effects on high-energy neutrino fluxes from astrophysical hidden sources

High-energy neutrinos are expected to be produced in a vareity of astrophysical sources as well as in optically thick hidden sources. We explore the matter-induced oscillation effects on emitted neutrino fluxes of three different flavors from the latter class. We use the ratio of electron and tau induced showers to muon tracks, in upcoming neutrino telescopes, as the principal observable in our analysis. This ratio depends on the neutrino energy, density profile of the sources and on the oscillation parameters. The largely unknown flux normalization drops out of our calculation and only affects the statistics. For the current knowledge of the oscillation parameters we find that the matter-induced effects are non-negligible and the enhancement of the ratio from its vacuum value takes place in an energy range where the neutrino telescopes are the most sensitive. Quantifying the effect would be useful to learn about the astrophysics of the sources as well as the oscillation parameters. If the neutrino telescopes mostly detect diffuse neutrinos without identifying their sources, then any deviation of the measured flux ratios from the vacuum expectation values would be most naturally explained by a large population of hidden sources for which matter-induced neutrino oscillation effects are important.Comment: Phys.Rev.D accepted version. 12 pages, 10 figures. Results unchanged, added references, minor changes and text re-arrangement

Atmospheric neutrino oscillations and tau neutrinos in ice

The main goal of the IceCube Deep Core Array is to search for neutrinos of astrophysical origins. Atmospheric neutrinos are commonly considered as a background for these searches. We show here that cascade measurements in the Ice Cube Deep Core Array can provide strong evidence for tau neutrino appearance in atmospheric neutrino oscillations. A careful study of these tau neutrinos is crucial, since they constitute an irreducible background for astrophysical neutrino detection.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions in the mu-tau sector

We discuss the effects of non-standard neutrino interactions on muon rates in high statistics atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments like IceCube DeepCore. We concentrate on the mu-tau sector, which is presently the least constrained. It is shown that the magnitude of the effects depends strongly on the sign of the Epsilon_MuTau parameter describing this non-standard interactions. A simple analytic model is used to understand the parameter space where differences between the two signs are maximized. We discuss how this effect is partially degenerate with changing the neutrino mass hierarchy, as well as how this degeneracy could be lifted.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figure

Atmospheric neutrinos in ice and measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters

The main goal of the IceCube Deep Core Array is to search for neutrinos of astrophysical origins. Atmospheric neutrinos are commonly considered as a background for these searches. We show that the very high statistics atmospheric neutrino data can be used to obtain precise measurements of the main oscillation parameters.Comment: expanded discussion of systematic uncertainties, 8 pages, 4 figure