Search for Neutrino Oscillations at the Palo Verde Nuclear Reactors

Abstract

We report on the initial results from a measurement of the anti-neutrino flux and spectrum at a distance of about 800 m from the three reactors of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station using a segmented gadolinium-loaded scintillation detector. We find that the anti-neutrino flux agrees with that predicted in the absence of oscillations to better than 5%, excluding at 90% CL $\overline{\hat{\mathrm{I}}}{½}_{\mathrm{e}}-\overline{\hat{\mathrm{I}}}{½}_{\mathrm{x}}$ oscillations with $\hat{I}”m^2>1.12\times 10^{-3}$ eV^2 for maximal mixing and ${\sin }^{2}2\hat{I}¸>0.21$ for large $\hat{I}”m^2$.

4 Pages, 3 figures