Precision spectroscopy with reactor anti-neutrinos

Abstract

In this work we present an accurate parameterization of the anti-neutrino flux produced by the isotopes 235U, 239Pu and 241Pu in nuclear reactors. We determine the coefficients of this parameterization, as well as their covariance matrix, by performing a fit to spectra inferred from experimentally measured beta spectra. Subsequently we show that flux shape uncertainties play only a minor role in the KamLAND experiment, however, we find that future reactor neutrino experiments to measure the mixing angle ${\theta }_{13}$ are sensitive to the fine details of the reactor neutrino spectra. Finally, we investigate the possibility to determine the isotopic composition in nuclear reactors through an anti-neutrino measurement. We find that with a 3 month exposure of a one ton detector the isotope fractions and the thermal reactor power can be determined at a few percent accuracy, which may open the possibility of an application for safeguard or non-proliferation objectives.

arXiv comment20 pages, 8 figures, refs. added, typos corrected, version published in PRD

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• ERNIE: A Reactor Antineutrino Inverse Beta Decay Event Generator
• R2D2 - a symmetric measurement of reactor neutrinos free of systematical errors