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Improved Sterile Neutrino Constraints from the STEREO Experiment with 179 Days of Reactor-On Data

The STEREO collaboration Almazán, H. ; Bernard, L. ; Blanchet, A. ; et al.
Phys.Rev.D 102 (2020) 052002, 2020.
Inspire Record 1770821 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.92323

The STEREO experiment is a very short baseline reactor antineutrino experiment. It is designed to test the hypothesis of light sterile neutrinos being the cause of a deficit of the observed antineutrino interaction rate at short baselines with respect to the predicted rate, known as the reactor antineutrino anomaly. The STEREO experiment measures the antineutrino energy spectrum in six identical detector cells covering baselines between 9 and 11 m from the compact core of the ILL research reactor. In this article, results from 179 days of reactor turned on and 235 days of reactor turned off are reported at a high degree of detail. The current results include improvements in the modelling of detector optical properties and the gamma-cascade after neutron captures by gadolinium, the treatment of backgrounds, and the statistical method of the oscillation analysis. Using a direct comparison between antineutrino spectra of all cells, largely independent of any flux prediction, we find the data compatible with the null oscillation hypothesis. The best-fit point of the reactor antineutrino anomaly is rejected at more than 99.9% C.L.

22 data tables match query

Data from Figures 33 and 34 – STEREO exclusion and exclusion sensitivity contours at 95% C.L. for 179 days reactor-on (phase-I+II) using the two-dimensional method. A graphical presentation can be downloaded at "Resources" for reference.

Data from Figures 33 and 34 – STEREO exclusion and exclusion sensitivity contours at 95% C.L. for 179 days reactor-on (phase-I+II) using the two-dimensional method. A graphical presentation can be downloaded at "Resources" for reference.

Data from Figure 32 – STEREO exclusion and exclusion sensitivity contours at 90% C.L. for 179 days reactor-on (phase-I+II). A full graphical presentation can be downloaded at "Resources" for reference.

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First antineutrino energy spectrum from $^{235}$U fissions with the STEREO detector at ILL

The STEREO collaboration Almazán, H. ; Bernard, L. ; Blanchet, A. ; et al.
J.Phys.G 48 (2021) 075107, 2021.
Inspire Record 1821378 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.99805

This article reports the measurement of the $^{235}$U-induced antineutrino spectrum shape by the STEREO experiment. 43'000 antineutrinos have been detected at about 10 m from the highly enriched core of the ILL reactor during 118 full days equivalent at nominal power. The measured inverse beta decay spectrum is unfolded to provide a pure $^{235}$U spectrum in antineutrino energy. A careful study of the unfolding procedure, including a cross-validation by an independent framework, has shown that no major biases are introduced by the method. A significant local distortion is found with respect to predictions around $E_\nu \simeq 5.3$ MeV. A gaussian fit of this local excess leads to an amplitude of $A = 12.1 \pm 3.4\%$ (3.5$\sigma$).

3 data tables match query

STEREO Detector Response Matrix, sampled using STEREO's simulation using neutrinos with energy distributed according to HFR's IBD yield prediction. The matrix is given as a 200x22 matrix, with 200 50keV-wide $E_\nu$ bins (centers ranging from 0.05 to 10 MeV) and 22 250keV-wide measured-energy bins corresponding to measured data. The matrix is not normalized; desired normalization (e.g., $\sum_j R_{ij} = e_i$ where $e_i$ is the efficiency) has to be applied before the matrix can be used.

Data from Figure 6 – Selection efficiency as a function of $E_\nu$.

Spectrum prediction for ILL's High Flux Reactor, given in 50keV-wide $E_\nu$ bins (centers ranging from 1.8 to 10 MeV). Huber's $^{235}$U prediction in [2 MeV, 8 MeV] is taken from Phys. Rev. C 84 024617 (2011); exponential extrapolations are performed as described in Phys. Rev. Lett. 125 201801 (2020). Relative corrections from Off-equilibrium and Activation are included to obtain the total HFR's spectrum. The IBD cross section we used is based on Strumia-Vissani Phys. Lett. B, 564 42–54 (2003). The IBD yield is simply HFR's spectrum $\times$ IBD cross section. More details can be found in Section 5, where all notations are also introduced.