MEMPHYS: A next generation megaton scale water Cherenkov detector in Europe

Future large underground detectors for neutrino physics are studied in Europe within the FP7 design studies LAGUNA, EUROnu and Laguna-LBNO. In this paper the MEMPHYS detector and its development phases are described. MEMPHYS is a proposed 0.5 Mton scale Water Cherenkov experiment to be performed deep underground. It is dedicated to nucleon decay, neutrinos from supernovse, solar and atmospheric neutrinos, as well as neutrinos from a future Super-Beam (SB) or β-Beam (βB) to measure the mixing angle θ13, the CP violating phase δ and the mass hierarchy. A small-scale prototype, MEMPHYNO, has been constructed with the purpose of serving as a test bench for new photo detection and data acquisition solutions.