69 research outputs found
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 , 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
, 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
Online Monitoring of the Osiris Reactor with the Nucifer Neutrino Detector
Originally designed as a new nuclear reactor monitoring device, the Nucifer
detector has successfully detected its first neutrinos. We provide the second
shortest baseline measurement of the reactor neutrino flux. The detection of
electron antineutrinos emitted in the decay chains of the fission products,
combined with reactor core simulations, provides an new tool to assess both the
thermal power and the fissile content of the whole nuclear core and could be
used by the Inter- national Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA) to enhance the
Safeguards of civil nuclear reactors. Deployed at only 7.2m away from the
compact Osiris research reactor core (70MW) operating at the Saclay research
centre of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA),
the experiment also exhibits a well-suited configuration to search for a new
short baseline oscillation. We report the first results of the Nucifer
experiment, describing the performances of the 0.85m3 detector remotely
operating at a shallow depth equivalent to 12m of water and under intense
background radiation conditions. Based on 145 (106) days of data with reactor
ON (OFF), leading to the detection of an estimated 40760 electron
antineutrinos, the mean number of detected antineutrinos is 281 +- 7(stat) +-
18(syst) electron antineutrinos/day, in agreement with the prediction 277(23)
electron antineutrinos/day. Due the the large background no conclusive results
on the existence of light sterile neutrinos could be derived, however. As a
first societal application we quantify how antineutrinos could be used for the
Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures - Version
CeLAND: search for a 4th light neutrino state with a 3 PBq 144Ce-144Pr electron antineutrino generator in KamLAND
The reactor neutrino and gallium anomalies can be tested with a 3-4 PBq
(75-100 kCi scale) 144Ce-144Pr antineutrino beta-source deployed at the center
or next to a large low-background liquid scintillator detector. The
antineutrino generator will be produced by the Russian reprocessing plant PA
Mayak as early as 2014, transported to Japan, and deployed in the Kamioka
Liquid Scintillator Anti-Neutrino Detector (KamLAND) as early as 2015.
KamLAND's 13 m diameter target volume provides a suitable environment to
measure the 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 neutrino state. This will provide a comprehensive test of
the electron dissaperance neutrino anomalies and could lead to the discovery of
a 4th neutrino state for Delta_m^2 > 0.1 eV^2 and sin^2(2theta) > 0.05.Comment: 67 pages, 50 figures. Th. Lasserre thanks the European Research
Council for support under the Starting Grant StG-30718
Light Sterile Neutrinos: A White Paper
This white paper addresses the hypothesis of light sterile neutrinos based on
recent anomalies observed in neutrino experiments and the latest astrophysical
data
Development of dynamic models for neutron transport calculations
A quasi-static approach within the framework of neutron transport theory is used to develop a computational tool for the time-dependent analysis of nuclear systems. The determination of the shape function needed for the quasistatic scheme is obtained by the steady-state transport code DRAGON. The kinetic model solves the system of ordinary differential equations for the amplitude function on a fast scale. The kinetic parameters are calculated by a coupling module that retrieves the shape from the output of the transport code and performs the required adjoint-weighted quadratures. When the update of the shape has to be carried out, the coupling module generates an appropriate input file for the transport code. Both the standard Improved Quasi-Static scheme and an innovative Predictor-Corrector algorithm are implemented. The results show the feasibility of both procedures and
their effectiveness in terms of computational times and accuracy
The SOX experiment in the neutrino physics
SOX (Short distance neutrino Oscillations with BoreXino) is a new experiment that takes place at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) and it exploits the Borexino detector to study the neutrino oscillations at short distance. In different phases, by using two artificial sources Cr-51 and Ce-144-Pr-144, neutrino and antineutrino fluxes of measured intensity will be detected by Borexino in order to observe possible neutrino oscillations in the sterile state. In this paper an overview of the experiment is given and one of the two calorimeters that will be used to measure the source activity is described. At the end the expected sensitivity to determine the neutrino sterile mass is shown
The SOX experiment: understanding the detector behavior using calibration sources
The SOX experiment investigates the existence of light sterile neutrinos. A solid signal would mean the discovery of the first particles beyond the Standard Electroweak Model and would have profound implications in our understanding of the Universe and of fundamental particle physics. In case of a negative result, it is able to close a long standing debate about the reality of the neutrino anomalies. The SOX experiment will use a antineutrino generator placed 8.5~m below the Borexino liquid scintillator detector. In view of the SOX experiment, a precise knowledge of the energy response and the spatial reconstruction of the antineutrino events is very important. Consequently, a calibration campaign of the Borexino detector is foreseen before the beginning of the SOX data taking. This paper briefly reviews the techniques used for calibrate the Borexino detector
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