Reactor Fuel Fraction Information on the Antineutrino Anomaly

Abstract

We analyzed the evolution data of the Daya Bay reactor neutrino experiment in terms of short-baseline active-sterile neutrino oscillations taking into account the theoretical uncertainties of the reactor antineutrino fluxes. We found that oscillations are disfavored at $2.6\sigma$ with respect to a suppression of the ${}^{235}\text{U}$ reactor antineutrino flux and at $2.5\sigma$ with respect to variations of the ${}^{235}\text{U}$ and ${}^{239}\text{Pu}$ fluxes. On the other hand, the analysis of the rates of the short-baseline reactor neutrino experiments favor active-sterile neutrino oscillations and disfavor the suppression of the ${}^{235}\text{U}$ flux at $3.1\sigma$ and variations of the ${}^{235}\text{U}$ and ${}^{239}\text{Pu}$ fluxes at $2.8\sigma$. We also found that both the Daya Bay evolution data and the global rate data are well-fitted with composite hypotheses including variations of the ${}^{235}\text{U}$ or ${}^{239}\text{Pu}$ fluxes in addition to active-sterile neutrino oscillations. A combined analysis of the Daya Bay evolution data and the global rate data shows a slight preference for oscillations with respect to variations of the ${}^{235}\text{U}$ and ${}^{239}\text{Pu}$ fluxes. However, the best fits of the combined data are given by the composite models, with a preference for the model with an enhancement of the ${}^{239}\text{Pu}$ flux and relatively large oscillations.

9 pages

References in corpus (3)

• The Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly
• Improved Measurement of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay
• Experiment NEUTRINO-4 Search for Sterile Neutrino

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Sterile Neutrinos
• Sterile Neutrinos or Flux Uncertainties? - Status of the Reactor Anti-Neutrino Anomaly
• Statistical significance of the sterile-neutrino hypothesis in the context of reactor and gallium data
• Diagnosing the Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly with Global Antineutrino Flux Data
• Sterile Neutrino Searches with MicroBooNE: Electron Neutrino Disappearance
• Prospects for Improved Understanding of Isotopic Reactor Antineutrino Fluxes
• An Altarelli Cocktail for the MiniBooNE Anomaly?
• Joint Measurement of the ${}^{235}$U Antineutrino Spectrum by Prospect and Stereo
• Reactor antineutrino flux and anomaly
• PROSPECT-II Physics Opportunities
• A Low Mass Optical Grid for the PROSPECT Reactor Antineutrino Detector
• IceCube Sterile Neutrino Searches
• Future searches for light sterile neutrinos at nuclear reactors
• Sensitivity to sterile neutrino mixing using reactor antineutrinos
• Quasi-Sterile Neutrinos from Dark Sectors I. BSM matter effects in neutrino oscillations and the short-baseline anomalies
• Model-Independent Determination of Isotopic Cross Sections per Fission for Reactor Antineutrinos
• Exploring Current Constraints on Antineutrino Production by ${}^{241}$Pu and Paths Towards the Precision Reactor Flux Era