English

Reactor On-Off Antineutrino Measurement with KamLAND

High Energy Physics - Experiment 2013-03-21 v2 Nuclear Experiment Geophysics

Abstract

The recent long-term shutdown of Japanese nuclear reactors has resulted in a significantly reduced reactor nuˉe\bar{nu}_{e} flux at KamLAND. This running condition provides a unique opportunity to confirm and constrain backgrounds for the reactor nuˉe\bar{nu}_{e} oscillation analysis. The data set also has improved sensitivity for other nuˉe\bar{nu}_{e} signals, in particular nuˉe\bar{nu}_{e}'s produced in β\beta-decays from 238^{238}U and 232^{232}Th within the Earth's interior, whose energy spectrum overlaps with that of reactor nuˉe\bar{nu}_{e}'s. Including constraints on θ13\theta_{13} from accelerator and short-baseline reactor neutrino experiments, a combined three-flavor analysis of solar and KamLAND data gives fit values for the oscillation parameters of tan2θ12=0.4360.025+0.029tan^{2} \theta_{12} = 0.436^{+0.029}_{-0.025}, Δm212=7.530.18+0.18×105eV2\Delta m^{2}_{21} = 7.53^{+0.18}_{-0.18} \times 10^{-5} {eV}^{2}, and sin2θ13=0.0230.002+0.002sin^{2} \theta_{13} = 0.023^{+0.002}_{-0.002}. Assuming a chondritic Th/U mass ratio, we obtain 11627+28116^{+28}_{-27} nuˉe\bar{nu}_{e} events from 238^{238}U and 232^{232}Th, corresponding to a geo nuˉe\bar{nu}_{e} flux of 3.40.8+0.8×106cm2s13.4^{+0.8}_{-0.8} \times 10^{6} {cm^{-2}s^{-1}} at the KamLAND location. We evaluate various bulk silicate Earth composition models using the observed geo nuˉe\bar{nu}_{e} rate.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1303.4667,
  title  = {Reactor On-Off Antineutrino Measurement with KamLAND},
  author = {The KamLAND Collaboration},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.4667},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

9 pages, 8 figures. Fig.4 (b) has been replaced with the corrected version