Design studies for a long base-line neutrino beam

Strong interest has recently been shown in very long base-line neutrino beams, directed at existing or planned massive detector facilities, in order to extend the search for neutrino oscillations. Among such possibilities are beams from CERN pointing towards the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory in Italy and the NESTOR Underwater Laboratory in the Ionian Sea off the west coast of the Peloponnese. In order to establish the basic parameters, a number of possible configurations for such beams have been studied covering a range of neutrino energy bands; estimates of the neutrino fluxes, event rates and backgrounds at typical detectors are reported. Considerations have been given to the optimum length and radius of the decay tunnels. It is shown that with one year of operation, a neutrino oscillation search down to limits of sin2 2θ = 1.1 × 10−2 and Δm2 = 3.5 × 10−4eV2 could be made with currently proposed detectors.