Status and perspectives of the JUNO experiment (1804.03575v1)

Abstract: The determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy, whether the $\nu 3$ neutrino mass eigenstate is heavier or lighter than the $\nu _1$ and $\nu _2$ mass eigenstates, is one of the remaining undetermined fundamental aspects of the Standard Model in the lepton sector. Furthermore the mass hierarchy determination will have an impact in the quest of the neutrino nature (Dirac or Majorana mass terms) towards the formulation of a theory of flavour. The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a reactor neutrino experiment under construction at Kaiping, Jiangmen in Southern China composed by a large liquid scintillator detector (sphere of 35.4 m of diameter) surronding by 18000 large PMTs and 25000 small PMTs, a water cherenkov detector and a top tracker detector. The large active mass (20 kton) and the unprecedented energy resolution (3\% at 1 MeV) will allow to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy with good sensitivity and to precisely measure the neutrino mixing parameters, $\theta _{12}$, $\Delta m^2{21} $, and $\Delta m^2_{ee}$ below the 1\% level. Moreover, a large liquid scintillator detector will allow to explore physics beyond mass hierarchy determination, in particular on many oyher topics such as in astroparticle physics, like supernova burst and diffuse supernova neutrinos, solar neutrinos, atmospheric neutrinos, geo-neutrinos, nucleon decay, indirect dark matter searches and a number of additional exotic searches. In this work the status and the perspectives of the JUNO experiment will be described, focusing also on the main physics aims and the other possible physics cases.