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

Electric Field Driven Interlayer Polarization Effects in Ferromagnetic 2D Van Der Waals Graphene/CrBr3 Heterostructure

2D vdW heterostructures are realized promising in nano-electronics due to their tunable electronic and magnetic behaviour. Modelling of ferromagnet/non-metal combination is worth to study electronic properties. We studied external electric field tuned electronic structure and magnetic moment variation in the framework of ferromagnetic ground state ordering non-spin interaction. The heterostructure system exhibits tenability in electronic bandgap. Similarly, the magnetic moment shows minor fluctuation in its value due to interlayer polarization. This is beneficial to be extended further for interesting quantum behaviour of phase change and suitability of the system in electronic device applications.</div

Evaluation performance to assess accurate exchange-correlation functional in van der Waals TMD Materials AB2 (A = Mo, W and B = S, Se and Te)

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) show multi-functionality due to their highly adjustable chemical, physical, and electronic properties. Here, structural, electronic, and phonon response are systematically studied for 06 TMDs systems via density functional theory (DFT) simulations. A reversible phase transition is revealed between the semiconducting (2H) phase and the metallic (1T) phase in the stable phases of these TMD systems. Precisely, group-VI TMDs (AB2, A = Mo, W and B = S, Se, Te) are focused in this present calculations. Their electronic behavior is assessed to check the accuracy of few available exchange-correlation (XC) functional, along with van der Waals density functional (vdW-DFs). Here, both spin-orbit coupling (SOC) effects and no SOC (NSOC) cases are considered during the calculations. Changes observed in the electronic band structure and density of states for the 2H and 1T phases are worth noticing, which highlights their potential capabilities for conventional device functionalities. These observations not only enable to find the most accurate XC functional, but also shed light on the potential functionalities of these TMDs materials