Improved Search for a Light Sterile Neutrino with the Full Configuration of the Daya Bay Experiment

Abstract

This Letter reports an improved search for light sterile neutrino mixing in the electron antineutrino disappearance channel with the full configuration of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. With an additional 404 days of data collected in eight antineutrino detectors, this search benefits from 3.6 times the statistics available to the previous publication, as well as from improvements in energy calibration and background reduction. A relative comparison of the rate and energy spectrum of reactor antineutrinos in the three experimental halls yields no evidence of sterile neutrino mixing in the 2 × 10^(−4) ≲ |Δm^2_(41)| ≲0.3  eV^2 mass range. The resulting limits on sin^2 2θ_(14) are improved by approx imately a factor of 2 over previous results and constitute the most stringent constraints to date in the |Δm^2_(41)| ≲ 0.2  eV^2 region.

Additional Information

© 2016 American Physical Society. (Received 6 July 2016; published 7 October 2016) The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment is supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the CAS Center for Excellence in Particle Physics, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Guangdong provincial government, the Shenzhen municipal government, the China General Nuclear Power Group, the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of the Institute of High Energy Physics, the Shanghai Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, the University Development Fund of the University of Hong Kong, the MOE program for Research of Excellence at National Taiwan University, National Chiao-Tung University, MOST funding support from Taiwan, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Berkeley National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic, Charles University in Prague, the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, the NSFC-RFBR joint research program, and the National Commission for Scientific and Technology Research of Chile. We acknowledge the Yellow River Engineering Consulting Co., Ltd., and the China Railway 15th Bureau Group Co., Ltd., for building the underground laboratory. We are grateful for the ongoing cooperation from the China General Nuclear Power Group and China Light and Power Company.

Attached Files

Submitted - 1607.01174v3.pdf

Published - PhysRevLett.117.151802.pdf

Supplemental Material - chiSquareMap_DayaBay_621days.dat

Supplemental Material - readme.pdf

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