Statistical Evaluation of Experimental Determinations of Neutrino Mass Hierarchy

Understand

Statistical methods of presenting experimental results in constraining the neutrino mass hierarchy (MH) are discussed.

• Two problems are considered and are related to each other: how to report the findings for observed experimental data, and how to evaluate the ability of a future experiment to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy, namely, sensitivity of the experiment.
• For the first problem where experimental data have already been observed, the classical statistical analysis involves constructing confidence intervals for the parameter {\Delta}m^2_{32}.
• These intervals are deduced from the parent distribution of the estimation of {\Delta}m^2_{32} based on experimental data.