No Arabic abstract
One of the most puzzling questions in neutrino physics is the origin of the excess at 5 MeV in the reactor antineutrino spectrum. In this paper, we explore the excess via the reaction $^{13}$C$(overline{ u}, overline{ u}^prime n)^{12}$C$^*$ in organic scintillator detectors. The de-excitation of $^{12}$C$^*$ yields a prompt $4.4$ MeV photon, while the thermalization of the product neutron causes proton recoils, which in turn yield an additional prompt energy contribution with finite width. Together, these effects can mimic an inverse beta decay event with around 5 MeV energy. We consider several non-standard neutrino interactions to produce such a process and find that the parameter space preferred by Daya Bay is disfavored by measurements of neutrino-induced deuteron disintegration and coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. While non-minimal particle physics scenarios may be viable, a nuclear physics solution to this anomaly appears more appealing.
We present results from global fits to the available reactor antineutrino dataset, as of Fall 2019, to determine the global preference for a fourth, sterile neutrino. We have separately considered experiments that measure the integrated inverse-beta decay (IBD) rate from those that measure the energy spectrum of IBD events at one or more locations. The software used is the newly developed GLoBESfit tool set which is based on the publicly available GLoBES framework and will be released as open-source software.
New fissile isotopes antineutrino spectra ($^{235}$U, $^{238}$U, $^{239}$Pu and $^{241}$Pu) calculation is presented. On base of summation method the toy model was developed. It was shown that total antineutrino number is conserved in framework of given database on individual fragments yields. The analysis of antineutrino spectrum shape says that any presented antineutrino spectrum should satisfy to the total antineutrino number conservation.
We discuss a possibility that the so-called reactor antineutrino anomaly can be, at least in part, explained by applying a quantum field-theoretical approach to neutrino oscillations, which in particular predicts a small deviation from the classical inverse-square law at short but macroscopic distances between the neutrino source and detector. An extensive statistical analysis of the reactor data is performed to examine this speculation.
The Taishan Antineutrino Observatory (TAO, also known as JUNO-TAO) is a satellite experiment of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). A ton-level liquid scintillator detector will be placed at about 30 m from a core of the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant. The reactor antineutrino spectrum will be measured with sub-percent energy resolution, to provide a reference spectrum for future reactor neutrino experiments, and to provide a benchmark measurement to test nuclear databases. A spherical acrylic vessel containing 2.8 ton gadolinium-doped liquid scintillator will be viewed by 10 m^2 Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) of >50% photon detection efficiency with almost full coverage. The photoelectron yield is about 4500 per MeV, an order higher than any existing large-scale liquid scintillator detectors. The detector operates at -50 degree C to lower the dark noise of SiPMs to an acceptable level. The detector will measure about 2000 reactor antineutrinos per day, and is designed to be well shielded from cosmogenic backgrounds and ambient radioactivities to have about 10% background-to-signal ratio. The experiment is expected to start operation in 2022.
This Letter reports a measurement of the flux and energy spectrum of electron antineutrinos from six 2.9~GW$_{th}$ nuclear reactors with six detectors deployed in two near (effective baselines 512~m and 561~m) and one far (1,579~m) underground experimental halls in the Daya Bay experiment. Using 217 days of data, 296,721 and 41,589 inverse beta decay (IBD) candidates were detected in the near and far halls, respectively. The measured IBD yield is (1.55 $pm$ 0.04) $times$ 10$^{-18}$~cm$^2$/GW/day or (5.92 $pm$ 0.14) $times$ 10$^{-43}$~cm$^2$/fission. This flux measurement is consistent with previous short-baseline reactor antineutrino experiments and is $0.946pm0.022$ ($0.991pm0.023$) relative to the flux predicted with the Huber+Mueller (ILL+Vogel) fissile antineutrino model. The measured IBD positron energy spectrum deviates from both spectral predictions by more than 2$sigma$ over the full energy range with a local significance of up to $sim$4$sigma$ between 4-6 MeV. A reactor antineutrino spectrum of IBD reactions is extracted from the measured positron energy spectrum for model-independent predictions.