Neutrino oscillation studies with reactors

Abstract

The observation of neutrino oscillations indicates that neutrinos have mass and that their flavours are quantum mechanical mixtures. Here, the authors review the past, present and future contributions of nuclear reactor-based neutrino oscillation experiments, their accomplishments and the remaining challenges.

Measurement of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay

“…They provided the first experimental observation of (anti)neutrinos [1], confirmed neutrino oscillation as the solution to the solar neutrino problem [2], provided the first detection of geo-neutrinos [3], and discovered the nonzero neutrino mixing angle θ 13 [4,5]. Forthcoming reactor antineutrino experiments are aiming to further explore the nature of neutrinos by determining the neutrino mass hierarchy, precisely measuring neutrino mixing parameters, and searching for short-baseline neutrino oscillation [6]. Over the last five decades, reactor antineutrino experiments have measured the flux and spectrum of antineutrinos at various distances from nuclear reactors ranging from ∼10 m to several hundred kilometers.…”

Neutrino physics with accelerator driven subcritical reactors

“…This proposal is complimentary to reactor-based experiments (reviewed in ref. [14]) that will measure θ ee because the 8 Li decay spectrum extends about 50% higher than the relevant part of the reactor spectrum, and so one has access to the same values of L/E JHEP01 (2016) Figure 1. The region of θ ee − ∆M 2 parameter space which may be excluded with 2σ (black curve), 3σ (blue curve) and 5σ (red curve) of confidence by an IsoDAR run with a near detector at 5 m and a far detector at 15 m. The red and blue vertical lines are the 2 degree of freedom 95% exclusion limits from long baseline experiments and from solar neutrinos plus KamLAND respectively, as summarized in ref.…”

A complete optical model for liquid-scintillator detectors

“…The liquid scintillator (LS) technique has been widely used in neutrino experiments for more than sixty years and, in particular, in neutrino oscillation studies with reactors [1]. Nowadays neutrino oscillation experiments have entered an era of precision measurement, where LS-based neutrino detectors such as Daya Bay [2] and JUNO [3] will continue to play leading roles.…”