Sensitivity to neutrino decay with atmospheric neutrinos at INO

Abstract

Sensitivity of the magnetised Iron CALorimeter (ICAL) detector at the proposed India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) to invisible decay of the mass eigenstate ${\nu }_3$ using atmospheric neutrinos is explored. A full three-generation analysis including earth matter effects is performed in a framework with both decay and oscillations. The wide energy range and baselines offered by atmospheric neutrinos are shown to be excellent for constraining the ${\nu }_3$ lifetime. We find that with an exposure of 500 kton-yr the ICAL atmospheric experiment could constrain the ${\nu }_3$ lifetime to ${\tau }_3/m_3>1.51\times 10^{-10}$ s/eV at the 90\% C.L. This is two orders of magnitude tighter than the bound from MINOS. The effect of invisible decay on the precision measurement of ${\theta }_{23}$ and $|\Delta m_{32}^2|$ is also studied.