Getting the Most From Atmospheric Neutrinos

Abstract

Observations of atmospheric neutrinos by the SuperKamiokande collaboration have demonstrated large mixing of the muon-neutrino. However the present atmospheric neutrino data does not significantly constrain the associated mixing of the electron-neutrino, or the sign of the mass-squared difference. Here we identify the diagnostics for these quantities and they also test the theory of how matter affects neutrino oscillations. These diagnostics are a dip in the sub-GeV muon flux at a zenith angle of 110 degrees, a bump in the electron up-down asymmetry at multi-GeV energies and a bump in the muon-antimuon upward asymmetry.

Comments: 13 pages, 2 figures To be published in Physical Review Letters