The OPERA experiment in the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory (LNGS) has been designed to perform the first detection of neutrino oscillations in direct appearance mode in the muon to tau neutrino channel. The detector is hybrid, being made of an emulsion/lead target and of electronic detectors. It is placed in the CNGS neutrino beam 732 km away from the neutrino source. Runs with CNGS neutrino...

We study the gravitational collapse of non-rotating massive stars (40–50M ̄) and the associated neutrino burst by general relativistic ν-radiation hydrodynamics. We show that the neutrino burst from the accreting proto-neutron star till the black hole formation is short and energetic in a situation of failed explosion. This unique characteristics is a hallmark of black hole formation and disting...

The precision and discovery potential of a neutrino factory based on muon storage rings is studied. For three-family neutrino oscillations, we analyse how to measure or severely constraint the angle θ13, CP violation, MSW effects and the sign of the atmospheric mass difference ∆m23. We present a simple analytical formula for the oscillation probabilities in matter, with all neutrino mass differ...

The use of liquid helium and neon as scintillators for neutrino detection is investigated. Several unique properties of these cryogens make them promising candidates for real-time solar neutrino spectroscopy: large ultraviolet scintillation yields from ionizing radiation, transparency to their own scintillation light, and low levels of radioactive impurities. When neutrinos scatter from electro...

We calculated the expected neutrino signal in Borexino from a typical Type II supernova at a distance of 10 kpc. A burst of around 110 events would appear in Borexino within a time interval of about 10 s. Most of these events would come from the reaction channel ν̄e + p → e+ + n, while about 30 events would be induced by the interaction of the supernova neutrino flux on 12C in the liquid scintil...

We have calculated cross sections and branching ratios for neutrino induced reactions on 208 Pb and 56 Fe for various supernova and accelerator-relevant neutrino spectra. This was motivated by the facts that lead and iron will be used on one hand as target materials in future neutrino detectors, on the other hand have been and are still used as shielding materials in accelerator-based experimen...

Cosmological probes are steadily reducing the total neutrino mass window, resulting in constraints on the neutrino-mass degeneracy as the most significant outcome. In this work we explore the discovery potential of cosmological probes to constrain the neutrino hierarchy, and point out some subtleties that could yield spurious claims of detection. This has an important implication for next gener...

The recent detection of γ-rays with energy up to 10 TeV from dense regions surrounding some Supernova Remnants (SNR) provides strong, though still not conclusive, evidence that the nucleonic component of galactic Cosmic Rays is accelerated in the supernova outflows. Neutrino telescopes could further support the validity of such scenario by detecting neutrinos coming from the same regions. We re...

As the calorimetric method of neutrino-energy reconstruction is generally considered to be largely insensitive to nuclear effects, its application seems to be an effective way for reducing systematic uncertainties in oscillation experiments. To verify the validity of this opinion, we quantitatively study the sensitivity of the calorimetric energy reconstruction to the effect of final-state inte...

The Booster Neutrino Experiment (MiniBooNE) searches for νμ → νe oscillations using the ∼1 GeV neutrino beam produced by the FNAL Booster synchrotron. The array of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) lining the MiniBooNE detector records Cherenkov and scintillation photons from the charged particles produced in neutrino interactions. We describe a maximum likelihood fitting algorithm used to reconstru...