# Presentation: 109283

## Physics at an Upgraded Fermilab Proton Driver

**Steve Geer**
**March 15 , 2005**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Outline

**Introduction**
**Main Motivation: Neutrino Oscillations**
**Neutrino Scattering**
**Muons**
**Kaons, pions, neutrons, antiprotons .....**
**Summary**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Introduction

**Neutrino physics provides the primary motivation for a new Fermilab Proton Driver.**
**The recent APS study on the future of neutrino physics concluded with some recommendations, amongst which:**
- “We recommend, as a high priority, a comprehensive U.S. program to complete our understanding of neutrino mixing, to determine the character of the neutrino mass spectrum, and to search for CP violation among neutrinos.”
**The program to do this should have as one of its components:**
- “A proton driver in the megawatt class or above and neutrino superbeam with an appropriate very large detector capable of observing CP violation and measuring the neutrino mass-squared differences and mixing parameters with high precision.”

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Neutrinos are Everywhere

**Neutrinos outnumber ordinary matter particles in the Universe (electrons, protons, neutrons) by a factor of ten billion.**
**Depending on their masses they may account for a few %  of the unknown “dark matter” in the Universe.**
**Neutrinos are important for stellar dynamics:**  ~71010 cm-2s-1 **stream through the Earth from the sun.**
**Neutrinos also govern Supernovae dynamics, and hence heavy element production.**
**If there is CP Violation in the neutrino sector, then neutrino physics might ultimately be responsible for Baryogenesis.**
**    ****To understand the nature of the Universe in which we live we must understand the properties of the neutrino.**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## We Don’t Know Everything About Neutrinos

***From the US APS Multi-Divisional Study on the Physics of Neutrinos***
**What are the masses of the neutrinos?**
**What is the pattern of mixing among the different types of neutrinos?**
**Are neutrinos their own antiparticles?**
**Do neutrinos violate the symmetry CP?**
**Are there “sterile” neutrinos? **
**Do neutrinos have unexpected or exotic properties?**
**What can neutrinos tell us about the models of  new physics beyond the Standard Model?**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Neutrino Oscillations are Exciting

**Neutrinos have nonzero masses and mixings !**
**This is exciting because:**
- The Standard Model needs modification accommodate neutrino mass terms, which require either the existence of right-handed neutrinos
- Dirac mass terms, or a violation of lepton number conservation
-  Majorana mass terms.
- The physics of neutrino masses & mixings is physics beyond the Standard Model.
- We don’t know the neutrino mass spectrum** **but we do know that neutrino masses & mass splittings are tiny compared to the masses of the other fundamental fermions. This suggests radically new physics, which perhaps originates at the GUT or Planck Scale, or indicates the existence of new spatial dimensions, or .....

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Neutrino Measurements Drive Theoretical Ideas

**Although we don’t have complete knowledge of the neutrino mixing matrix, we do know it is qualitatively very different from the quark mixing matrix. This necessarily constrains theoretical ideas about the underlying relationship between quarks and leptons.**
**Over the last few years knowledge of neutrino oscillation parameters has eliminated a previous generation of GUT models, leading to a new set of models designed to accommodate the data.**
**Further oscillation measurements will necessarily reject the majority of the new models, and hopefully lead to new ideas about physics beyond the Standard Model.**
**Neutrino Oscillation Measurements Drive Theoretical Ideas. This is expected to continue to be the case throughout the Proton Driver era.**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Neutrino Mixing

**Within the framework of 3-flavor mixing, the 3 known flavor eigenstates (********) are related to 3 neutrino mass eigenstates (********) :**

- Specifies the flavor content of the three
- neutrino mass eigenstates.

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Neutrino Mixing Matrix

- The neutrino mixing matrix can be  parameterized using 3 mixing angles (12 , 23 , 13 ) and one complex phase () :

- We know the rough values of  12 , 23 but only have an upper limiton 13, and no knowledge of .

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Neutrino Mass Spectrum

- The oscillations are driven by the mass splittings:   m2ij    m2i - m2j

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Measured Parameters

- From the solar-, atmospheric-, and reactor-neutrino data we already know a lot about the mixing matrix and mass splittings:

- ...  but note that we have only an upper limit on 13, and know nothing about   We need to search for   e oscillations !

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Why Do We Need High Intensity Proton Beams?

- We want to study rare processes. The upper limit on the all important e oscillation amplitude is ~5% !

**NEED MW-CLASS MULTI-GeV  PROTON SOURCES**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Why Fermilab ?

**Fermilab hosts the present U.S. accelerator based neutrino program, and with the completion of the NuMI beamline, operates ****the longest-baseline neutrino beam in the World. **
**The NuMI baseline is the only accelerator-based baseline long enough for matter effects to have a significant impact on the measured oscillation probabilities... and these matter effects provide the key for determining the pattern of neutrino masses.**
**The NuMI beam is unique... it can do what no other beam can do, namely exploit matter effects... provided the beam intensity is sufficient (2MW primary protons or more), and the detector is large enough (few times 10kt).**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## A Long-Baseline Fermilab Proton Driver Programwould make Critical Contributions to the Global Program

**Multi-phase program.**
**In all scenarios the Proton Driver has a critical role to play.**
**The NuMI longer-than-T2K baseline is needed to disentangle ****the mass hierarchy from CP violation.**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Neutrino Scattering Motivation

**High precision neutrino and antineutrino measurements with nuclear & nucleon targets **_**are needed for the oscillation physics program to reduce systematics**_** from cross-section uncertainties. **
**Neutrino scattering measurements are of interest in their own right:**
- CC QE Scattering
- Nucleon structure & binding of the nucleons within the nucleus
- NC Elastic Scattering
- Spin structure of the nucleon & the strange quark contribution
- Resonant & coherent production of pions
- Resonant structure of the nucleon & non-perturbative QCD  tests
- Strange Particle Production
- Understand backgrounds for proton decay searches
- Neutrino-Electron Elastic Scattering
- Neutrino magnetic moment

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Neutrino Scattering: Need for Higher Intensity

**In the pre-Proton Driver era we expect high precision **_**neutrino**_** measurements of CC & NC (quasi)elastic scattering, and CC & NC production of pions and strange particles off **_**nuclear targets**_**.**
**However:**** **
- (i) The antineutrino event rate is down by a factor of 3-5 (depending on energy) compared to the neutrino rate ... due to the cross-sections and the - production ratio, and
- (ii) The H2 & D2 target rates are down by an order of magnitude compared to nuclear target rates.
**We will need the Proton Driver to make high-precision measurements with antineutrino beams on nuclear targets, and with both neutrino and antineutrino beams on nucleon targets (H**2**,D**2**), using both the MI beam and the 8 GeV beam – motivates high power (2 MW) at 8 GeV.**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Low Energy Probes of High Mass Scales

**Many of these experiments are rate limited. Progress requires new beams and progress with detectors and/or readout.**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Muon Physics - Sensitivity

- Muon Source Requirements Needed to Make Progress

- The estimated number of low energy muons that could be provided with a 2MW Proton beam at 8 GeV is very large (31021 per year )... but utilization of these muons will be very inefficient (large phase space).** **

- Most experiments require p < 29 MeV/c, good extinction
- factors, small p/p.
- To make progress we need to try to design a cost-effective muon source, the matching to the candidate experiments  evaluate cost & performance.
- Cost may be the make or break issue.

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Pions

**Use 8 GeV proton beam + Recycler (?)  as a stretcher.**
**Interface between particle & nuclear physics:  **
- Meson & baryon spectroscopy & Lattice Gauge Theory tests. Would complement the JLab program. Baryon spectroscopy requires a 2.5 GeV/c /K tagged secondary beam.
** ********e2 & ********2 decays**
- precise probe of e-m universality in the weak interaction.
- Theoretical predictions 40X more precise than experiment.
** ********+ ******** ****e+********0**
- potentially offers improved  Vud measurement.

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Kaons

_**Present generation of rare kaon decay experiments are already rate limited.**_** Future experiments at the Proton Driver would need to benefit from a DC beam with a large duty cycle (refit Tevatron Ring with permanent magnet dipoles ?) & the improvements in instrumentation expected in the next few years. If this can be accomplished the Proton Driver would offer the possibility of advances in kaon decay sensitivity.**

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Neutrons

**Proton Driver would be comparable in its neutron capabilities with an upgraded SNS. There are some physics topics that will not be covered by the SNS program, and could be unique to the Proton Driver:**
- Production of ultra-cold neutrons neutron EDM and lifetime,
- neutron induced “upsets” in semiconductors,
- n-nbar oscillations (improve sensitivity by x100)

**The antiproton source could be used with the Proton Driver for a continuation of the low energy antiproton program:**** **
- Bottom-onium formation (?)
- CP Violation in hyperon decays
- order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity over HyperCP
- Light hadron spectroscopy (?)

- Antiprotons

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Summary – 1 

**Neutrino Oscillation physics is exciting **
- World Class, multi-phase, with the potential for further discoveries
**A Proton Driver program yielding 2MW at MI energies would make critical contributions to the Global neutrino program in all ********13**** scenarios, & (within reason) independent of exactly what else is built and when.****  **
- The NuMI beam is the longest-baseline beam in the World !
**Neutrino scattering measurements are important for the oscillation program, & broaden the program.**
- Needs 2MW or more at 8 GeV.
**The potential 8 GeV-based program includes neutrino scattering, low energy muon, pion & neutron experiments, & perhaps a 2****nd**** low energy neutrino beam going to the long-baseline detector.**** **
- Even at 2MW the 8 GeV proton beam would probably be over-subscribed.

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005

## Summary – 2 

_**The Proton Driver **__**could support a diverse physics program**_
**Physics of LFV **** Probing the GUT scale: **
- Neutrino Oscillations, precision muon experiments
**Physics at the TeV-scale (complementary to the LHC program): **
- Precision muon and kaon experiments, neutron experiments (?)
**Interface between particle and nuclear physics (complementary to Jlab program):**
- Neutrino scattering, hadron spectroscopy...
**Other possibilities:**
- Neutrons, antiprotons, ...

- Steve Geer  - Proton Driver Director's Review

- March 15-17, 2005