NuTag: a proof-of-concept study for a long-baseline neutrino beam

Abstract

Abstract The study of neutrino oscillation at accelerators is limited by systematic uncertainties, in particular on the neutrino flux, cross section, and energy estimates. These systematic uncertainties could be eliminated by a novel experimental technique: neutrino tagging. This technique relies on a new type of neutrino beamline and its associated instrumentation which would enable the kinematic reconstruction of the neutrinos produced in and decays. This article presents a proof-of-concept study for such a tagged beamline, aiming to serve a long-baseline neutrino experiment exploiting a megaton scale natural water Cherenkov detector. After optimising the target and the beamline optics to first order, a complete Monte Carlo simulation of the beamline has been performed. The results show that the beamline provides a meson beam compatible with the operation of the spectrometer, and delivers a neutrino flux sufficient to collect neutrino samples with a size comparable with similar experiments and with other un-tagged long-baseline neutrino experimental proposals.