CNGS neutrino beam for long base-line experiments: present status and perspectives

The CERN to Gran Sasso neutrino facility (CNGS) is designed to study the νμ→ντ oscillation with a high intensity neutrino beam sent to the ICARUS and OPERA long base-line experiments searching for ντ appearance at LNGS. An ambitious and demanding project aimed to the protection of electronics against radiation has been devised and carried out in a very short time in 2008. Therefore the facility ran smoothly from June 18th to November 3rd 2008 delivering almost 2.0⋅1019 proton on target.As a successive phase the CNGS facility could be addressed to the search of νμ→νe subleading transitions driven by θ13 mixing angle with a more intense off-axis neutrino beam. An increase of nearly an order of magnitude with respect to T2K expected sensitivity should be reached by exposing ∼ 20 kt liquid Argon TPC detector shallow-depth at the Gran Sasso site.