Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2021
Volume 66, Number 5
Saturday–Tuesday, April 17–20, 2021; Virtual; Time Zone: Central Daylight Time, USA
Session B13: Reactor NeutrinosLive
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Sponsoring Units: DNP Chair: Nathaniel Bowden, LLNL |
Saturday, April 17, 2021 10:45AM - 10:57AM Live |
B13.00001: The Design and Expanded Physics Reach of the PROSPECT-II Detector Upgrade Christian Roca Catala The Precision Reactor Oscillation and SPECTrum (PROSPECT) experiment is a short-baseline reactor experiment aimed at measuring the spectrum of antineutrinos from the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and searching for potential short-baseline oscillations by the existence of sterile neutrinos. With the highest signal-to-background ratio on any surface antineutrino detector, PROSPECT has set new limits on the existence of eV-scale sterile neutrinos while measuring the world's most precise U-235 antineutrino spectrum. Following completion of its first run, the collaboration has developed an upgraded detector design, called PROSPECT-II, with the goal of improving the experiment's statistics and sensitivity. PROSPECT-II will provide unique access to oscillation parameter space at high mass splittings and new insight into the causes of discrepancies between reactor antineutrino spectrum predictions and measurements. This talk will describe the design of the PROSPECT-II detector and the physics program it enables. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 17, 2021 10:57AM - 11:09AM Live |
B13.00002: ROADSTR: a Mobile Antineutrino Detector Platform for enabling Multi-Reactor Spectrum, Oscillation, and Application Measurements Nathaniel Bowden The goal of the Reactor Operations Antineutrino Detection Surface Testbed Rover (ROADSTR) project is to develop and demonstrate enabling technologies for readily mobile antineutrino detectors able to make precision measurements at essentially any reactor facility. While readily mobile detectors have obvious appeal for reactor monitoring applications, they would also allow measurements at multiple reactors using the same detector. Such measurements with common detector response systematic uncertainties could be beneficial for short baseline oscillation studies, will help to constrain flux and spectrum predictions, and provide benchmark measurements for applications. Here we will summarize a variety of efforts underway within the project including continued development of Pulse Shape Discrimination capable scintillators, particularly $^6$Li-doped plastic, mobile detector implementations, and the study of correlated background reduction strategies and variations. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 17, 2021 11:09AM - 11:21AM Live |
B13.00003: Joint Isotope-Dependent Analysis of the Daya Bay and PROSPECT Reactor Antineutrino Spectra Jeremy Gaison The Daya Bay and PROSPECT experiments have made world-leading measurements of the $^{235}$U antineutrino fission spectra using liquid scintillator detectors located at nuclear reactors. The Daya Bay experiment has deconvolved a $^{235}$U spectrum from $\sim$3.5 million detected antineutrinos generated from power reactors with an isotopic mixture of fuels, and PROSPECT has detected $\sim$50,000 antineutrinos generated by a research reactor highly enriched in $^{235}$U. Combining the high-statistics Daya Bay measurement and PROSPECT's direct $^{235}$U measurement we derive a more precise measurement of the $^{235}$U antineutrino spectrum, improve the deconvolution of the power reactor fission spectrum into its individual isotopic components, and test for deviations against models of the reactor antineutrino spectrum. In this talk, I will present the current status of the joint spectral analyses between these experiments. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 17, 2021 11:21AM - 11:33AM Live |
B13.00004: A Joint Analysis of the PROSPECT and STEREO $^{235}$U Antineutrino Spectra Benjamin Foust The PROSPECT and STEREO experiments recently reported modern measurements of the $^{235}$U antineutrino energy spectra from highly-enriched uranium (HEU) research reactors using liquid scintillator based detectors. At HEU reactors, 99\% of the antineutrino flux comes from $^{235}$U, providing a direct measure of the energy spectrum and antineutrino flux from a single isotope. STEREO and PROSPECT have provided independent measurements with different systematics from measurements at ILL (France) and HFIR (US). This analysis compares and combines both measurements to test their consistency and provide the best combined measurement of the 235U antineutrino spectrum. In this talk, I will present the current status of this joint spectral analysis. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 17, 2021 11:33AM - 11:45AM Live |
B13.00005: Current Status and Prospects of the JUNO Experiment Roberto Mandujano The Jianmeng Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kton underground liquid scintillator detector under construction in China. The scintillator will be located in a 35.4 m diameter acrylic sphere surrounded by about 18,000 20" photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and 25,600 3" PMTs providing a photocoverage over $75\%$. This and other features will allow JUNO to reach an unprecedented energy resolution of ${3\%}$ at 1~MeV. JUNO will feature a rich physics portfolio with neutrinos from many sources: nuclear reactors, supernovae, cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere, the Sun, and the Earth. Among its primary physics goals is the determination of the neutrino mass ordering, which it will do to 3-4 $\sigma$ significance in 6 years of data taking. Furthermore, it will measure three neutrino oscillation parameters with an uncertainty under 1\%. This talk will provide a broad overview of the status and prospects of the experiment. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 17, 2021 11:45AM - 11:57AM Live |
B13.00006: An ENDF/B Decay Data Sub-library Spectra for Reactor Antineutrinos Below the Inverse Beta Decay Threshold Energy. RYAN LOREK, Andrea Mattera, Elizabeth McCutchan, Alejandro Sonzogni Nuclear databases play an important role in understanding the production of electron antineutrinos in nuclear reactors, which is currently of importance for refining our understanding of neutrino oscillations, reactor monitoring, and non-proliferation. Here the ENDF/B decay data sublibrary is applied to construct the reactor antineutrino spectra below the inverse beta decay energy threshold for all relevant power reactor fuels in order to enhance research efforts in the study of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering. At antineutrino energies below 2 MeV spectral features manifest that reveal aspects of the fundamental physics taking place in a nuclear reactor, including decay product yields and half-lives. Likewise, trends in evenness of nuclides are revealed as a function of spectral energy in the lower energy regime. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 17, 2021 11:57AM - 12:09PM Live |
B13.00007: Advances in radiation detectors based on finely-segmented PSD plastic scintillator: from fast neutrons to reactor antineutrinos Viacheslav Li Pulse-shape discrimination between nuclear and electronic recoil is a powerful technique to improve background rejection of scintillation detectors. Until recently, only liquid form of PSD organic scintillators was in use. The invention of stable plastic PSD scintillators at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory made it possible to envision a new class of radiation detectors. The plastic form is advantageous over liquid as one can machine segments of the scintillator into any desired size and shape. At LLNL, we have been designing and testing a variety of finely-segmented detectors, utilizing silicon photomultiplier arrays (SiPMs) as well as conventional photomultiplier tubes. The scintillation photons propagate along the segments to the photosensors via total internal reflection. Such detectors can be used in a variety of applications and basic research. If doped with $^6$Li, the scintillator becomes sensitive to thermal neutrons; thus, capable of detecting reactor antineutrinos via the inverse-beta-decay (IBD) reaction. This has been the primary focus of our research to develop the Segmented AntiNeutrino Directional Detector (SANDD); and it is the main subject of this talk. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 17, 2021 12:09PM - 12:21PM Live |
B13.00008: Novel Ge Detectors in Exploring Geo-Neutrinos . Mathbar Raut, Sanjay Bhattarai, Dongming Mei The source of most of the heat flux coming from inside the Earth is believed to be radiogenic heating along with secular cooling of earth. Among all radiogenic heating elements, Uranium-238, Thorium-235, Thorium-232, and potassium-40 radiate almost 99 percent of heat. Due to relatively shorter half-life of Potassium-40, it is crucial to know the abundance of Potassium and its spatial distribution in crust, mantle as well as in core. These radiogenic elements decay by emitting electron-neutrinos of different energies. Direct detection of geo-neutrinos, especially the ones from Potassium-40, has been challenging task for decades. Neutrino-nucleus coherent scattering and neutrino-electron scattering are two promising methods to detect geo-neutrinos from Potassium-40 and Thorium-232. High purity germanium detectors with extremely high energy resolution and pulse shape discrimination of the signals over the backgrounds can be a good detector for detecting geo-neutrinos. In this paper, we present a study on the amount of high purity germanium detector needed to detect geo-neutrinos from Potassium-40 and Thorium-232 directly over the vast background of solar neutrinos. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 17, 2021 12:21PM - 12:33PM Live |
B13.00009: Low-Energy Solar Neutrino Detection Utilizing Advanced Germanium Detectors Sanjay Bhattarai We prospect the possibility to use advanced germanium (Ge) detectors as a low-energy solar neutrino observatory by means of neutrino-nucleus elastic scattering. A Ge detector utilizing internal charge amplification for the charge carriers created by the ionization of impurities is a novel technology with experimental sensitivity for detecting low-energy solar neutrinos. Such a novel detector with only 1 kg of high-purity Ge will give \textasciitilde 10 events per year for pp neutrinos and \textasciitilde 4 events per year for 7 Be neutrinos with the energy threshold at 0.01 eV. We present the sensitivity of a Ge experiment for detecting solar neutrinos in the low-energy region. We show that, if germanium internal charge amplification technology becomes available, then a new opportunity arises to observe pp and 7 Be solar neutrinos. With 1 kg-year exposure, the sensitivity is equivalent to a xenon-based experiment with a detection threshold of 50 keV. [Preview Abstract] |
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