Experimental Determination of the Antineutrino Spectrum of the Fission Products of ${}^{238}$U

Abstract

An experiment was performed at the scientific neutron source FRM II in Garching to determine the cumulative antineutrino spectrum of the fission products of ${}^{238}$U. This was achieved by irradiating target foils of natural uranium with a thermal and a fast neutron beam and recording the emitted $\beta$-spectra with a gamma-suppressing electron-telescope. The obtained $\beta$-spectrum of the fission products of ${}^{235}$U was normalized to the data of the magnetic spectrometer BILL of ${}^{235}$U. This method strongly reduces systematic errors in the ${}^{238}$U measurement. The $\beta$-spectrum of ${}^{238}$U was converted into the corresponding antineutrino spectrum. The final ${\bar{\nu }}_e$-spectrum is given in 250 keV bins in the range from 2.875 MeV to 7.625 MeV with an energy-dependent error of 3.5 % at 3 MeV, 7.6 % at 6 MeV and $\gtrsim$ 14 % at energies $\gtrsim$ 7 MeV (68 % confidence level). Furthermore, an energy-independent uncertainty of $\sim$ 3.3 % due to the absolute normalization is added. Compared to the generally used summation calculations, the obtained spectrum reveals a slight spectral distortion of $\sim$ 10 % but returns the same value for the mean cross section per fission for the inverse beta decay.

References in corpus (3)

• The Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly
• Improved Measurement of Electron Antineutrino Disappearance at Daya Bay
• Conversion of electron spectrum associated with fission into the antineutrino spectrum

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