Evidence for a 5 MeV Spectral Deviation in the Goesgen Reactor Neutrino Oscillation Experiment

Abstract

Recent reactor neutrino experiments observe an anomalous excess around 5 MeV in the prompt energy spectra of positrons following the inverse beta decay reaction. In this note we suggest that this 5 MeV anomaly was already present in a much earlier experiment, which was carried out in the 1980's at three distances from the 2.8 GW nuclear powerplant at Goesgen, Switzerland. In particular we demonstrate with a log-likelihood test performed on the Goesgen data that the no-anomaly hypothesis is disfavored at a level of 3.8 sigma.

6 pages, 1 figure

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