Abstract
First results on the energy spectrum and flux of reactor antineutrinos as a function of the distance L from the reactor core, measured in the Neutrino-4 experiment for 6 < L < 12 m, are presented. The flux L‑dependence fits to the 1/L2 form with a statistical significance of ~10% corresponding to 1.64σ, so that the measured spectrum deviates from the 1/L2 law at a confidence level ~90%. The measured energy spectrum deviates from the predicted one at a similar confidence level ~90%. That both deviations are best described with oscillation parameters in the same regions of \(\Delta m_{{14}}^{2} \approx 0.7{\text{-}}0.8\) eV2and \({{\sin }^{2}}2{{\Theta }_{{14}}} \approx 0.10{\text{-}}0.15\) boosts the overall confidence level to ~95% (2σ). These results suggest that antineutrinos oscillate to a sterile state, but still fall short of reliably establishing the oscillation phenomenon. At present, the possibility of mimicking the oscillation effect by systematic errors cannot be completely excluded.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research under Agreement no. 14-22-03055-ofi_m. The delivery of liquid scintillator from the laboratory headed by Professor Jun Cao (Institute of High Energy Physics, Beijing, China) was an important contribution to this work.
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Translated by A. Asratyan
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Serebrov, A.P., Ivochkin, V.G., Samoilov, R.M. et al. Sterile Neutrino Search in the Neutrino-4 Experiment at the SM-3 Reactor. Phys. Part. Nuclei 49, 701–708 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063779618040482
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063779618040482