The PROSPECT Reactor Antineutrino Experiment

Abstract

The Precision Reactor Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment, PROSPECT, is designed to make both a precise measurement of the antineutrino spectrum from a highly-enriched uranium reactor and to probe eV-scale sterile neutrinos by searching for neutrino oscillations over meter-long baselines. PROSPECT utilizes a segmented ${}^6$Li-doped liquid scintillator detector for both efficient detection of reactor antineutrinos through the inverse beta decay reaction and excellent background discrimination. PROSPECT is a movable 4-ton antineutrino detector covering distances of 7m to 13m from the High Flux Isotope Reactor core. It will probe the best-fit point of the ${\bar{\nu }}_e$ disappearance experiments at 4$\sigma$ in 1 year and the favored regions of the sterile neutrino parameter space at more than 3$\sigma$ in 3 years. PROSPECT will test the origin of spectral deviations observed in recent ${\theta }_{13}$ experiments, search for sterile neutrinos, and address the hypothesis of sterile neutrinos as an explanation of the reactor anomaly. This paper describes the design, construction, and commissioning of PROSPECT and reports first data characterizing the performance of the PROSPECT antineutrino detector.

arXiv comment30 pages, 33 figures; updated with journal revision and reference

References in corpus (12)

• Sterile Neutrino Oscillations: The Global Picture
• Light Sterile Neutrinos: A White Paper
• Measurement of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay
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• First search for short-baseline neutrino oscillations at HFIR with PROSPECT
• The Detector System of The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment
• The impact of sterile neutrinos on CP measurements at long baselines
• The PROSPECT Physics Program
• Background Radiation Measurements at High Power Research Reactors
• Performance of a segmented ${}^6$Li-loaded liquid scintillator detector for the PROSPECT experiment
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Cited by in corpus (30)

• Status of Light Sterile Neutrino Searches
• Strong New Limits on Light Dark Matter from Neutrino Experiments
• Improved Short-Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Search and Energy Spectrum Measurement with the PROSPECT Experiment at HFIR
• Combined Neyman-Pearson Chi-square: An Improved Approximation to the Poisson-likelihood Chi-square
• MicroBooNE and the ${\nu }_e$ Interpretation of the MiniBooNE Low-Energy Excess
• Measurement of the Antineutrino Spectrum from ${}^{235}$U Fission at HFIR with PROSPECT
• Limits on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from the PROSPECT Reactor Antineutrino Experiment
• SoLid: A short baseline reactor neutrino experiment
• Neutrino physics with dark matter detectors
• Lithium-loaded Liquid Scintillator Production for the PROSPECT experiment
• A prototype for SANDD: A highly-segmented pulse-shape-sensitive plastic scintillator detector incorporating silicon photomultiplier arrays
• Particle physics origin of the 5 MeV bump in the reactor antineutrino spectrum?
• Final Measurement of the U235 Antineutrino Energy Spectrum with the PROSPECT-I Detector at HFIR
• Joint Measurement of the ${}^{235}$U Antineutrino Spectrum by Prospect and Stereo
• SANDD: A directional antineutrino detector with segmented 6Li-doped pulse-shape-sensitive plastic scintillator
• A Low Mass Optical Grid for the PROSPECT Reactor Antineutrino Detector
• PROSPECT-II Physics Opportunities
• Measurement of neutron-proton capture in the SNO+ water phase
• Water-based Liquid Scintillator Detector as a New Technology Testbed for Neutrino Studies in Turkey
• Final Search for Short-Baseline Neutrino Oscillations with the PROSPECT-I Detector at HFIR
• Characterization of a radiation detector based on opaque water-based liquid scintillator
• Development of a Quality Assurance Process for the SoLid Experiment
• Looping Around Neutrino Charge Radius at Ultra-Near Reactor Experiments
• Detecting Supernova Axions with IAXO
• Antineutrino Detectors Remain Impractical for Nuclear Explosion Monitoring
• NuSD: A Geant4 based simulation framework for segmented anti-neutrino detectors
• Exploring Current Constraints on Antineutrino Production by ${}^{241}$Pu and Paths Towards the Precision Reactor Flux Era
• A prototype reactor-antineutrino detector based on ${}^6$Li-doped pulse-shaping-discriminating plastic scintillator
• The Architected Multi-material Scintillator System: Designs and Modeling
• Calibration strategy of the PROSPECT-II detector with external and intrinsic sources