SoLid: a short baseline reactor neutrino experiment

Abstract

The SoLid experiment, short for Search for Oscillations with a Lithium-6 detector, is a new generation neutrino experiment which tries to address the key challenges for high precision reactor neutrino measurements at very short distances from a reactor core and with little or no overburden. The primary goal of the SoLid experiment is to perform a precise measurement of the electron antineutrino energy spectrum and flux and to search for very short distance neutrino oscillations as a probe of eV-scale sterile neutrinos. This paper describes the SoLid detection principle, the mechanical design and the construction of the detector. It then reports on the installation and commissioning on site near the BR2 reactor, Belgium, and finally highlights its performance in terms of detector response and calibration.

Status of Anomalies and Sterile Neutrino Searches at Nuclear Reactors

“…The SoLid experiment [30] is located at baselines between 6 and 9 m from the BR2 HEU reactor in Belgium. Its core has a height of 90 cm and a diameter of 50 cm, providing 80 MW thermal power.…”

Searches for sterile neutrinos at very short baseline reactor experiments

“…The extremely highly segmented SoLid detector consists of 12800 polyvinyltoluene cubes ((5×5×5) cm 3 ) with thin sheets of 6 LiF:ZnS(Ag) to capture and detect neutrons [77]. Light from each cube is collected with three orthogonal wavelenght-shifting fibers read out with Silicon Photo Multipliers (SiPM).…”

New Physics searches in a low threshold scintillating argon bubble chamber measuring coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering in reactors

“…CEνNS was first observed by the COHERENT collaboration using a CsI[Na] crystal [10] and later with a LAr detector [11] in the Spallation source SNS at Oak Ridge. This elusive process is still pending to be observed for neutrinos produced in nuclear reactors and it is currently a race among several collaborations [1,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. Recently, evidence of its observation has been reported using a germanium detector [20], indicating that the first measurement of this process for reactor neutrinos is expected within less than a couple of years.…”

“…Several detectors are currently taking data [12,13] or under construction [1,[14][15][16][17][18][19]. The SBC collaboration is developing a low threshold argon scintillating bubble chamber aiming to achieve a 100 eV threshold.…”