Probing light sterile neutrinos in medium baseline reactor experiments

Abstract

Medium baseline reactor experiments (Double Chooz, Daya Bay and RENO) provide a unique opportunity to test the presence of light sterile neutrinos. We analyze the data of these experiments in the search of sterile neutrinos and also test the robustness of theta_13 determination in the presence of sterile neutrinos. We show that existence of a light sterile neutrino state improves the fit to these data moderately. We also show that the measured value of theta_{13} by these experiments is reliable even in the presence of sterile neutrinos, and the reliability owes significantly to the Daya Bay and RENO data. From the combined analysis of the data of these experiments we constrain the mixing of a sterile neutrino with mass squared difference in the range of (10^{-3}-10^{-1}) eV^2 to sin^2 2 theta_{14} <0.1 at 95 % C.L..

v2: improved discussion, references added, matched the version published in PRD

References in corpus (7)

• Observation of electron-antineutrino disappearance at Daya Bay
• The Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly
• Global fit to three neutrino mixing: critical look at present precision
• Measurement of the neutrino mass splitting and flavor mixing by MINOS
• Searching for sterile neutrinos in ice
• Testing the very-short-baseline neutrino anomalies at the solar sector
• KATRIN Sensitivity to Sterile Neutrino Mass in the Shadow of Lightest Neutrino Mass

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Sterile Neutrinos
• Search for a Light Sterile Neutrino at Daya Bay
• Improved Search for a Light Sterile Neutrino with the Full Configuration of the Daya Bay Experiment
• The impact of sterile neutrinos on CP measurements at long baselines
• Reactor neutrino oscillations as constraints on Effective Field Theory
• Capabilities of long-baseline experiments in the presence of a sterile neutrino
• Nonstandard Neutrino Interactions in Supernovae
• Impact of sterile neutrinos on the early time flux from a galactic supernova
• Assessing the role of nuclear effects in the interpretation of the MiniBooNE low-energy anomaly
• Active-sterile neutrino oscillations at INO-ICAL over a wide mass-squared range
• Search for Signatures of Sterile Neutrinos with Double Chooz
• Extended Grimus-Stockinger theorem and inverse square law violation in quantum field theory
• Search for Sub-eV Sterile Neutrinos in the Precision Multiple Baselines Reactor Antineutrino Oscillation Experiments
• Phenomenology of the Sterile Neutrinos