Letter of interest for a neutrino beam from Protvino to KM3NeT/ORCA

Abstract The Protvino accelerator facility located in the Moscow region, Russia, is in a good position to offer a rich experimental research program in the field of neutrino physics. Of particular interest is the possibility to direct a neutrino beam from Protvino towards the KM3NeT/ORCA detector, which is currently under construction in the Mediterranean Sea 40 km offshore Toulon, France. This proposal is known as P2O. Thanks to its baseline of 2595 km, this experiment would yield an unparalleled sensitivity to matter effects in the Earth, allowing for the determination of the neutrino mass ordering with a high level of certainty after only a few years of running at a modest beam intensity of $$\approx ~90~\hbox {kW}$$ ≈90kW . With a prolonged exposure ($$\approx 1500\hbox { kW}\,\,\hbox {year}$$ ≈1500kWyear ), a $$2\sigma $$ 2σ sensitivity to the leptonic CP-violating Dirac phase can be achieved. A second stage of the experiment, comprising a further intensity upgrade of the accelerator complex and a densified version of the ORCA detector (Super-ORCA), would allow for up to a $$6\sigma $$ 6σ sensitivity to CP violation and a $$10^\circ {-}17^\circ $$ 10∘-17∘ resolution on the CP phase after 10 years of running with a 450 kW beam, competitive with other planned experiments. The initial composition and energy spectrum of the neutrino beam would need to be monitored by a near detector, to be constructed several hundred meters downstream from the proton beam target. The same neutrino beam and near detector set-up would also allow for neutrino-nucleus cross section measurements to be performed. A short-baseline sterile neutrino search experiment would also be possible.