Experimental Parameters for a Cerium 144 Based Intense Electron Antineutrino Generator Experiment at Very Short Baselines

The standard three-neutrino oscillation paradigm, associated with small squared mass splittings $\ll 0.1\ \mathrm{eV^2}$, has been successfully built up over the last 15 years using solar, atmospheric, long baseline accelerator and reactor neutrino experiments. However, this well-established picture might suffer from anomalous results reported at very short baselines in some of these experiments. If not experimental artifacts, such results could possibly be interpreted as the existence of at least an additional fourth sterile neutrino species, mixing with the known active flavors with an associated mass splitting $\ll 0.1\ \mathrm{eV^2}$, and being insensitive to standard weak interactions. Precision measurements at very short baselines (5 to 15 m) with intense MeV electronic antineutrino emitters can be used to probe these anomalies. In this article, the expected antineutrino signal and backgrounds of a generic experiment which consists of deploying an intense beta minus radioactive source inside or in the vicinity of a large liquid scintillator detector are studied. The technical challenges to perform such an experiment are identified, along with quantifying the possible source and detector induced systematics, and their impact on the sensitivity to the observation of neutrino oscillations at short baselines.Comment: 21 pages, 27 figures, generated with pdflatex, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

White paper: CeLAND - Investigation of the reactor antineutrino anomaly with an intense 144Ce-144Pr antineutrino source in KamLAND

We propose to test for short baseline neutrino oscillations, implied by the recent reevaluation of the reactor antineutrino flux and by anomalous results from the gallium solar neutrino detectors. The test will consist of producing a 75 kCi 144Ce - 144Pr antineutrino source to be deployed in the Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Anti-Neutrino Detector (KamLAND). KamLAND's 13m diameter target volume provides a suitable environment to measure energy and position dependence of the detected neutrino flux. A characteristic oscillation pattern would be visible for a baseline of about 10 m or less, providing a very clean signal of neutrino disappearance into a yet-unknown, "sterile" state. Such a measurement will be free of any reactor-related uncertainties. After 1.5 years of data taking the Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly parameter space will be tested at > 95% C.L.Comment: White paper prepared for Snowmass-2013; slightly different author lis