NEUTON · NEUTrino OscillatioN analysis at T2K and SuperKamiokande experiments: Can neutrinos explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe?

NEUTrino OscillatioN analysis at T2K and SuperKamiokande experiments: Can neutrinos explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe?

The NEUTON project is aimed at getting a better knowledge of the neutrino oscillation phenomena in long-baseline neutrino oscillation facilities. The success of these studies and experiments is of paramount relevance for the understanding of the evolution of the Universe among other open questions in Science. 'Why the Universe is primarily comprised of matter today, instead of equal parts of matter and antimatter', is one of the most intriguing questions in all of science. In spite of its tremendous success, the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particles does not fully answer several fundamental questions, which require to be investigated with various complementary approaches and using different “messenger” particles, such as the elusive neutrinos. In particular, the SM assumes charge-parity (CP) symmetry which involves that production and decay rates of particles and antiparticles should be equivalent; but such situation would have led to an empty cosmos shortly after the Big Bang. So, what CP-violating (CPV) process beyond the SM favoured the production of matter over antimatter? The answer could lie in the recent discovery of neutrino oscillations, which has glimpsed the possibility that neutrinos and antineutrinos behave differently, opening the door to new physics beyond the SM. This has motivated several experiments (FermiLab [USA]: NOvA, MINERvA, DUNE; Japan: T2K and SuperKamiokande (SK)) aimed at determining neutrino oscillation parameters and CPV as well as other open questions in Physics such as dark matter search through sterile neutrinos, proton decay or supernovae analysis. Nevertheless, the success of current and forthcoming neutrino oscillation experiments largely depends on an accurate description of neutrino interactions, where the determination of neutrino-nucleus cross sections is one of the leading experimental uncertainties. The current precision on the modelling of these cross-section at the level of 10% are by far too large for the precision expected by the next generation of experiments (< 5%). In this sense, the neutrino interaction models developed by the University of Seville group would help to improve this analysis as they provide an accurate description of neutrino cross-section data in a broad energy range, being a promising candidate to be implemented in the T2K and SK neutrino event generators. This would improve the experimental systematics needed to answer the above mentioned open questions as well as to shorten the required running time and experimental costs of current and next-generation neutrino experiments (DUNE and HyperKamiokande).

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