Analysis of the Daya Bay Reactor Antineutrino Flux Changes with Fuel Burnup

Abstract

We investigate the recent Daya Bay results on the changes in the antineutrino flux and spectrum with the burnup of the reactor fuel. We find that the discrepancy between current model predictions and the Daya Bay results can be traced to the original measured ${}^{235}$U/${}^{239}$Pu ratio of the fission beta spectra that were used as a base for the expected antineutrino fluxes. An analysis of the antineutrino spectra that is based on a summation over all fission fragment beta-decays, using nuclear database input, explains all of the features seen in the Daya Bay evolution data. However, this summation method still predicts an anomaly. Thus, we conclude that there is currently not enough information to use the antineutrino flux changes to rule out the possible existence of sterile neutrinos.

References in corpus (2)

• Observation of electron-antineutrino disappearance at Daya Bay
• The Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Sterile Neutrinos
• Updated Summation Model: An Improved Agreement with the Daya Bay Antineutrino Fluxes
• Searching for eV-scale sterile neutrinos with eight years of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube neutrino telescope
• Mapping reactor neutrino spectra from TAO to JUNO
• Model-Independent Determination of Isotopic Cross Sections per Fission for Reactor Antineutrinos
• The Sterile-Active Neutrino Flavor Model: the Imprint of Dark Matter on the Electron Neutrino Spectra