High intensity neutrino oscillation facilities in Europe

The EUROnu project has studied three possible options for future, high intensity neutrino oscillation facilities in Europe. The first is a Super Beam, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of pions created by bombarding targets with a 4 MW proton beam from the CERN High Power Superconducting Proton Linac. The far detector for this facility is the 500 kt MEMPHYS water Cherenkov, located in the Fréjus tunnel. The second facility is the Neutrino Factory, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of μ+ and μ− beams in a storage ring. The far detector in this case is a 100 kt magnetized iron neutrino detector at a baseline of 2000 km. The third option is a Beta Beam, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of beta emitting isotopes, in particular He6 and Ne18, also stored in a ring. The far detector is also the MEMPHYS detector in the Fréjus tunnel. EUROnu has undertaken conceptual designs of these facilities and studied the performance of the detectors. Based on this, it has determined the physics reach of each facility, in particular for the measurement of CP violation in the lepton sector, and estimated the cost of construction. These have demonstrated that the best facility to build is the Neutrino Factory. However, if a powerful proton driver is constructed for another purpose or if the MEMPHYS detector is built for astroparticle physics, the Super Beam also becomes very attractive

Neutrino super beam based on a superconducting proton linac

We present a new design study of the neutrino Super Beam based on the Superconducting Proton Linac at CERN. This beam is aimed at megaton mass physics, a large water Cherenkov detector, proposed for the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane in France, with a baseline of 130 km. The aim of this proposed facility is to study CP violation in the neutrino sector. In the study reported here, we have developed the conceptual design of the neutrino beam, especially the target and the magnetic focusing device. Indeed, this beam presents several unprecedented challenges, related to the high primary proton beam power (4 MW), the high repetition rate (50 Hz), and the low kinetic energy of the protons (4.5 GeV). The design is completed by a study of all the main components of the system, starting from the transport system to guide the beam to the target up to the beam dump. This is the first complete study of a neutrino beam based on a pebble-bed target capable of standing the large heat deposition of MW class proton beams