Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2021 Fall Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics
Volume 66, Number 8
Monday–Thursday, October 11–14, 2021; Virtual; Eastern Daylight Time
Session LK: Mini-Symposium: Neutrinos and Nuclei IX: Sterile and Reactor Neutrinos II |
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Chair: Thomas O'Donnell, Virginia Tech Room: Arlington |
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 2:00PM - 2:12PM |
LK.00001: Status of the BEST sterile neutrino search In Wook Kim The Baksan Experiment on Sterile Transitions (BEST) searches for the neutrino oscillation to ~1 eV sterile neutrino by exploring the Gallium anomaly. Based on the Gallium-Germanium neutrino telescope (GGNT) of the SAGE experiment, the BEST setup is comprised of two concentric zones of liquid Ga target to explore the neutrino oscillation on the meter scale. Any deficit in the neutrino capture rates in the inner and the outer zones, as well as their differences, is sensitive to the existence of neutrino oscillation to a sterile state at a short baseline. |
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 2:12PM - 2:24PM |
LK.00002: Total Absorption Spectroscopy Measurement of the β-Decay of 104Nb Alexander M Laminack, Krzysztof Rykaczewski, Bertis C Rasco, Peng Shuai Nuclear reactors are an intense source of anti-νe which are commonly used for high energy particle physics experiments (e.g. RENO, Chooz, Daya Bay). These experiments have revealed a discrepancy in the measured anti-νe flux from a reactor and the expected anti-νe flux based on the present nuclear data. In order to compute an accurate reference anti-νe flux, the β-feeding intensities of fission products must be known. Additionally, β-feeding intensities of fission products are of interest for the safe and optimized operation of nuclear reactors since they are essential to modeling the decay heat. Current nuclear data is often incomplete or incorrect because of an unforeseen weakness of high precision measurements: the Pandemonium Effect. The Modular Total Absorption Spectrometer (MTAS) was designed to overcome this weakness with nearly 99% γ ray detection efficiency. The first measurement of the β-feeding intensities of 104Nb was made at Argonne National Laboratory using MTAS. We find that a lower proportion of the total Qβ energy is distributed to γ radiation than previous theoretical calculations indicated. |
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 2:24PM - 2:36PM |
LK.00003: CONFLUX – A Flexible, Modular Reactor Neutrino Flux Calculation Framework Xianyi Zhang The predicted reactor antineutrino flux is an important ingredient for particle physics measurements and neutrino-based safeguards applications, ranging from neutrino oscillation measurements to monitoring reactor fuel and operations. Over the past decade, comparisons between predictions and reactor neutrino experiments have revealed significant discrepancies which have motivated new neutrino and nuclear data measurements. CONFLUX is a new software framework that aims to provide a flexible and modular tool for multiple communities. This new framework is being developed to standardize the input and output of the flux calculation, increase the accessibility of neutrino, nuclear data to the community, and package benchmark reactor and nuclear data. The software integrates three different prediction modes: summation, beta-spectra conversion, and direct neutrino measurements. The comprehensive and flexible inclusion of nuclear data allow users to perform sensitivity studies, evaluate impact of new data, monitoring studies, assess novel reactor types, etc. In this presentation, we describe the structure of the framework, the calculation of beta spectra and fission products, as well as the nuclear data and beta, neutrino measurements used in the calculations. |
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 2:36PM - 2:48PM |
LK.00004: An ENDF/B Decay Data Sub-library Reactor Antineutrino Spectra Comparison to Recently Measured Decay Product Spectra. Ryan J Lorek, A.A. Sonzogni, Andrea Mattera, Libby McCutchan Nuclear databases continue to play an important role in understanding electron antineutrino production in nuclear reactors, which is important for refining our understanding of neutrino oscillations, reactor monitoring, and non-proliferation. Here the current up to date ENDF/B decay data sublibrary is utilized to construct the reactor antineutrino summation spectra for all relevant power reactor fuels in order to compare these spectra to experimentally measured fission decay product electron spectra results. This effort highlights the need for continued studies in fission decay product electron spectra. Likewise, trends are revealed when the ratio of these summation spectra are taken against the Huber-Mueller spectra. |
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 2:48PM - 3:00PM |
LK.00005: PROSPECT-II calibration strategy Xiaobin Lu The PROSPECT experiment completed its first data-taking run by the end of 2018 and reported high precision electron-antineutrino spectra and oscillation results at a short baseline about $\sim$ 7m from the highly-enriched $^{235}$U reactor core at High Flux Isotope Reactor(HFIR). For the second run an upgraded detector PROSPECT-II aims to further reduce $^{235}$U spectrum uncertainty and expand the oscillation sensitivity in the high mass-splitting regime. The upgrades include modifications to the containment vessel, inner detector, and calibration system to minimize dead mass inside the detector and materials in contact with the liquid scintillator. In this talk, I will describe the PROSPECT-II calibration system and its expected performance, based on PROSPECT-I data and Monte Carlo simulations. |
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 3:00PM - 3:12PM |
LK.00006: Improved Event Reconstruction and Spectrum Analysis using PROSPECT Antineutrino Data Christian Roca Catala The Precision Reactor Oscillation and SPECTrum (PROSPECT) experiment is a short-baseline reactor experiment aimed at to measure the spectrum of antineutrinos from the High Flux Isotope Reactor and search for potential short-baseline oscillations by the existence of sterile neutrinos. The data gathered during 2018 has allowed PROSPECT to reject a large portion of the available parameter space for sterile oscillations while providing additional evidence for the relative excess of antineutrinos detected in the 4-6~MeV region. However, the analyses performed to produce the last published results from PROSPECT excluded a portion of initially unusable data obtained within some of the segments of the detector containing non-operating PMTs. Recent efforts from the collaboration have resulted in a more sophisticated analysis that includes the Single Ended Event Reconstruction (SEER) of the previously unused segments, and the careful splitting of data periods to maximize the available statistics. The significant increase in statistics and signal to background ratio provides PROSPECT with a unique opportunity to further its physics outreach. |
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 3:12PM - 3:24PM |
LK.00007: Improved Inverse Beta Decay event selection and its impact on the PROSPECT oscillation analysis Diego C Venegas Vargas
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