Conversion of electron spectrum associated with fission into the antineutrino spectrum

Abstract

The accuracy of the procedure that converts the experimentally determined electron spectrum associated with fission of the nuclear fuels 235U, 239Pu, 241Pu, and 238U into the antineutrino [overline nu ]e spectrum is examined. By using calculated sets of mutually consistent spectra, this work shows that the conversion procedure can result in a small ~1% error provided several conditions are met. Chief among them are the requirements that the average nuclear charge <Z> as a function of the beta-decay endpoint energy is independently known and that the [overline nu ]e spectrum is binned into bins that are several times larger than the width of the slices used to fit the electron spectrum.