Exploring New Features of Neutrino Oscillations with a Triton Source and a Large Spherical TPC

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to study the neutrino oscillations as they may appear in the low energy neutrinos emitted in triton decay, with maximum neutrino energy of 18.6 KeV. Such low energy neutrino oscillations can only be detected via neutrino electron scattering. The novel feature is the fact that the cross section is sensitive to both charged and neutral currents. Thus one can simultaneously probe the electron neutrino disappearance as well as the appearance of the other two flavors. By folding the differential cross section with the neutrino spectrum one can study the dependence of the oscillation parameters as a function of the electron energy. The technical challenges to this end can be summarized as building a very large TPC capable of detecting low energy recoils, down to a few 100 eV, within the required low background constraints have been previously described \cite{NOSTOS1}. We only mention here that the oscillation involving the small angle theta_13, directly measured in this experiment, is fully contained inside the detector. A sensitivity of a few percent for the measurement of the above angle will be achieved.