Physics Potential of the ICAL detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO)
Creators: name: The ICAL Collaboration
name: Ahmed, Shakeel
name: Athar, M. Sajjad
name: Hasan, Rashid
name: Salim, Mohammad
name: Singh, S. K.
name: Inbanathan, S. S. R.
name: Singh, Venktesh
name: Subrahmanyam, V. S.
name: Behera, Shiba Prasad
name: Chandratre, Vinay B.
name: Dash, Nitali
name: Datar, Vivek M.
name: Kashyap, V. K. S.
name: Mohanty, Ajit K.
name: Pant, Lalit M.
name: Chatterjee, Animesh
name: Choubey, Sandhya
name: Gandhi, Raj
name: Ghosh, Anushree
name: Tiwari, Deepak
name: Ajmi, Ali
name: Sankar, S. Uma
name: Behera, Prafulla
name: Chacko, Aleena
name: Jafer, Sadiq
name: Libby, James
name: Raveendrababu, K.
name: Rebin, K. R.
name: Indumathi, D.
name: Meghna, K.
name: Lakshmi, S. M.
name: Murthy, M. V. N.
name: Pal, Sumanta
name: Rajasekaran, G.
name: Sinha, Nita
name: Agarwalla, Sanjib Kumar
name: Khatun, Amina
name: Mehta, Poonam
name: Bhatnagar, Vipin
name: Kanishka, R.
name: Kumar, A.
name: Shahi, J. S.
name: Singh, J. B.
name: Ghosh, Monojit
name: Ghoshal, Pomita
name: Goswami, Srubabati
name: Gupta, Chandan
name: Raut, Sushant
name: Bhattacharya, Sudeb
name: Bose, Suvendu
name: Ghosal, Ambar
name: Jash, Abhik
name: Kar, Kamalesh
name: Majumdar, Debasish
name: Majumdar, Nayana
name: Mukhopadhyay, Supratik
name: Saha, Satyajit
name: Acharya, B. S.
name: Banerjee, Sudeshna
name: Bhattacharya, Kolahal
name: Dasgupta, Sudeshna
name: Devi, Moon Moon
name: Dighe, Amol
name: Majumder, Gobinda
name: Mondal, Naba K.
name: Redij, Asmita
name: Samuel, Deepak
name: Satyanarayana, B.
name: Thakore, Tarak
name: Ravikumar, C. D.
name: Vinodkumar, A. M.
name: Gangopadhyay, Gautam
name: Raychaudhuri, Amitava
name: Choudhary, Brajesh C.
name: Gaur, Ankit
name: Kaur, Daljeet
name: Kumar, Ashok
name: Kumar, Sanjeev
name: Naimuddin, Md.
name: Bari, Waseem
name: Malik, Manzoor A.
name: Singh, Jyotsna
name: Krishnaveni, S.
name: Ravikumar, H. B.
name: Ranganathaiah, C.
name: Mahapatra, Swapna
name: Biswas, Saikat
name: Chattopadhyay, Subhasis
name: Ganai, Rajesh
name: Ghosh, Tapasi
name: Viyogi, Y. P.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det)
subject: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
subject: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: 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.
description: 139 pages, Physics White Paper of the ICAL (INO) Collaboration, Contents identical with the version published in Pramana - J. Physics