Building on earlier studies, we investigate the possibility to determine the
type of neutrino mass spectrum (i.e., "the neutrino mass hierarchy") in a high
statistics reactor electron antineutrino experiment with a relatively large
KamLAND-like detector and an optimal baseline of 60 Km. We analyze
systematically the Fourier Sine and Cosine Transforms (FST and FCT) of
simulated reactor antineutrino data with reference to their specific mass
hierarchy-dependent features discussed earlier in the literature. We perform
also a binned \chi^2 analysis of the sensitivity of simulated reactor electron
antineutrino event spectrum data to the neutrino mass hierarchy, and determine,
in particular, the characteristics of the detector and the experiment (energy
resolution, visible energy threshold, exposure, systematic errors, binning of
data, etc.), which would allow us to get significant information on, or even
determine, the type of the neutrino mass spectrum. We find that if \sin^2
2\theta_{13} is sufficiently large, \sin^2 2\theta_{13} \gtap 0.02, the
requirements on the set-up of interest are very challenging, but not impossible
to realize.Comment: 32 pages, 27 figures, accepted in Journal of High Energy Physic
