| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis, a number of aspects of neutrino oscillation physics are investigated, focusing
on the design and phenomenology of next generation neutrino beam experiments.
In working to optimise the sensitivity of the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment, new reconstruction
software has been developed to meet the goal of fast, flexible reconstruction
of particle positions, directions, energies and species. This is demonstrated for the
TITUS intermediate detector, producing samples of neutrino interactions to constrain
systematic uncertainties of oscillation analyses. Inclusion of these samples achieves a
reduction of over 50% of systematic errors in measurements of 23 and and increases
the parameter space for CP violation discovery after 10 years at 5 from 51% to 74%.
A full analysis is presented of a potential neutron measurement at the E61 detector,
including full simulations of all major backgrounds, a likelihood method of background
removal, and a procedure for correcting for efficiency and backgrounds. Large, pure
samples are produced, with the ability to accurately reproduce true distributions of
neutron capture multiplicity, distance and angle relative to neutrino interactions, with
true and reconstructed distributions agreeing within 2%.
The sensitivities of Hyper-Kamiokande, including with a possible second tank in Korea,
in combination with the DUNE experiment, have been thoroughly investigated. Several
areas of strong synergy are identified, with the optimal combination of experiments
possessing the ability to definitively resolve all remaining unknowns of 3-neutrino oscillations:
determining both the octant of 23 and the mass-ordering in under 2 years and
discovering CP violation at 5 for 50% of parameter space after 5 years.
The highly predictive Littlest Seesaw flavour models of neutrino masses and mixing are
tested against current oscillation data, finding no tension even at 1 . The ability of the
next-generation experiments’ oscillation measurements to probe these models is investigated,
with all strands of the programme, including long baseline beam experiments
and short and medium baseline reactor experiments, found to show high potential to
exclude the models both individually and in combination. | en_US |
