Physics Potential of the ICAL detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO)

The upcoming 50 kt magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is designed to study the atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos separately over a wide range of energies and path lengths. The primary focus of this experiment is to explore the Earth matter effects by observing the energy and zenith angle dependence of the atmospheric neutrinos in the multi-GeV range. This study will be crucial to address some of the outstanding issues in neutrino oscillation physics, including the fundamental issue of neutrino mass hierarchy. In this document, we present the physics potential of the detector as obtained from realistic detector simulations. We describe the simulation framework, the neutrino interactions in the detector, and the expected response of the detector to particles traversing it. The ICAL detector can determine the energy and direction of the muons to a high precision, and in addition, its sensitivity to multi-GeV hadrons increases its physics reach substantially. Its charge identification capability, and hence its ability to distinguish neutrinos from antineutrinos, makes it an efficient detector for determining the neutrino mass hierarchy. In this report, we outline the analyses carried out for the determination of neutrino mass hierarchy and precision measurements of atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters at ICAL, and give the expected physics reach of the detector with 10 years of runtime. We also explore the potential of ICAL for probing new physics scenarios like CPT violation and the presence of magnetic monopoles.Comment: 139 pages, Physics White Paper of the ICAL (INO) Collaboration, Contents identical with the version published in Pramana - J. Physic

Automated Speckle Interferometry of Known Binaries

Astronomers have been measuring the separations and position angles between the two components of binary stars since William Herschel began his observations in 1781. In 1970, Anton Labeyrie pioneered a method, speckle interferometry, that overcomes the usual resolution limits induced by atmospheric turbulence by taking hundreds or thousands of short exposures and reducing them in Fourier space. Our 2022 automation of speckle interferometry allowed us to use a fully robotic 1.0-meter PlaneWave Instruments telescope, located at the El Sauce Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile, to obtain observations of many known binaries with established orbits. The long-term objective of these observations is to establish the precision, accuracy, and limitations of this telescope's automated speckle interferometry measurements. This paper provides an early overview of the Known Binaries Project and provide example results on a small-separation (0.27") binary, WDS 12274-2843 B 228

Reaction Cross Section of Heavy Projectiles Using Coulomb Modified Glauber Model

We investigated reaction cross section and inelastic collisions of the wide number of projectile and target nuclei using the Coulomb Modified Glauber Model (CMGM). The total reaction cross sections were calculated with and without accounting for in-medium effect for various heavy projectiles such as 56Fe26, 84Kr36, 132Xe54, 197Au79 and 238U92 that interact with Nuclear Emulsion Detector’s (NED) nuclei at incident energies at around 1 GeV/n. The calculated average values of reaction cross section are compared with the corresponding experimental data

Reaction Cross Section of Heavy Projectiles Using Coulomb Modified Glauber Model

We investigated reaction cross section and inelastic collisions of the wide number of projectile and target nuclei using the Coulomb Modified Glauber Model (CMGM). The total reaction cross sections were calculated with and without accounting for in-medium effect for various heavy projectiles such as 56Fe26, 84Kr36, 132Xe54, 197Au79 and 238U92 that interact with Nuclear Emulsion Detector’s (NED) nuclei at incident energies at around 1 GeV/n. The calculated average values of reaction cross section are compared with the corresponding experimental data