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Conclusions

 

In conclusion, we have shown that, building on the expertise being acquired in CHORUS, NOMAD and NOMAD-STAR, and on the ideas discussed within the neutrino community, the techniques of emulsion and silicon can be combined into a powerful detector to search for oscillation. The experiment will exploit the direct detection of the decay topology with an effective kinematical analysis of the candidate events.

Recent advances in fast automatic scanning techniques obviate the need for the preselection of events resulting in an improved efficiency for the detection of . This efficiency is improved further by the accurate extrapolation of tracks to the emulsion provided by the silicon tracker. The scanning of all events appears feasible in about two years from the end of the data taking.

A careful study of the CERN accelerator chain capabilities has shown that a gain of a factor of two in protons on target per second can be achieved by the existing SPS Wide Band Beam.

Taking all these factors together the detector described in this Letter of Intent could improve the limit to be set by CHORUS and NOMAD, if they do not observe any oscillation candidates, by a factor of twenty reaching a sensitivity of at high and at maximal mixing. Alternatively, if the present short base line experiments detect a few candidates this detector would observe about 100 events (with a background of only one event) which would allow a more detailed study of the oscillation parameters.

In a scenario involving a small and a second large proposed recently to explain the LSND, solar and atmospheric results, this experiment would observe about 20 events with negligible background.

It should be pointed out that Cold-Hot Dark Matter scenarios greatly favour a with a mass of a few eV. If such a neutrino resulted in a of then this experiment could detect it even if an oscillation strength as low as prevailed.

We believe that the detector can be realized in three years. A technical run in the year 2001 can be envisaged, with data-taking in the years 2002-2004.


next up previous
Next: Neutrino oscillation scenarios Up: TOSCA Letter of Intent Previous: Expected sensitivity