Search for neutrino oscillations at the Palo Verde nuclear reactors

Creators: Boehm, F.; Busenitz, J.; Cook, B.; Gratta, G.; Henrikson, H.; Kornis, J.; Lawrence, D.; Lee, K. B.; McKinny, K.; Miller, L.; Novikov, V.; Piepke, A.; Ritchie, B.; Tracy, D.; Vogel, P.; Wang, Y.-F.; Wolf, J.

Abstract

We report on the initial results from a measurement of the antineutrino flux and spectrum at a distance of about 800 m from the three reactors of the Pale Verde Nuclear Generating Station using a segmented gadolinium-loaded scintillation detector. We find that the antineutrino flux agrees with that predicted in the absence of oscillations excluding at 90% C.L. <(nu)over bar>(e)-<(nu)over bar>(x) oscillations with Delta m(2) > 1.12 x 10(-3) eV(2) for maximal mixing and sin(2)2 theta > 0.21 for large Delta m(2). Our results support the conclusion that the atmospheric neutrino oscillations observed by Super-Kamiokande do not involve nu(e).

Additional Information

©2000 The American Physical Society. Received 22 December 1999. We thank the Arizona Public Service Company for the generous hospitality at the Palo Verde plant. The important contributions of M. Chen, R. Hertenberger, K. Lou, and N. Mascarenhas in the early stages of this project are gratefully acknowledged. We are indebted to J. F. Beacom, B. Barish, R. Canny, A. Godber, J. Hanson, D. Michael, C. Peck, C. Roat, N. Tolich, and A. Vital for their help. We also acknowledge the generous financial help from the University of Alabama, Arizona State University, Caltech, and Stanford University. Finally our gratitude goes to CERN, DESY, FNAL, LANL, LLNL, SLAC, and TJNAF which at different times provided us with parts and equipment for the experiment. This project was supported in part by the U.S. DoE. One of us (J.K.) received support from the Hungarian OTKA fund and another (L.M.) from the ARCS foundation.

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