Measuring θ₁₃ at Daya Bay

Technical Report · Fri Mar 14 00:00:00 EDT 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1158781· OSTI ID:1158781

Lau, Kwong ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Houston, TX (United States)

We measured the neutrino mixing angle, θ₁₃, presumably related to the preponderance of matter over antimatter in our universe with high precision. We determined θ₁₃ by measuring the disappearance of neutrinos from a group of six nuclear reactors. The target, located inside a mountain at about 2 km from the reactors, is 80 tons of liquid scintillator doped with trace amount of Gadolinium to increase its neutron detection efficiency. The neutrino flux is measured by the inverse beta-decay reaction where the final-state particles are detected by the liquid scintillator. The measured value of θ₁₃ based on data collected over 3 years, is large, around 8 degrees, rendering the measurement of the parameter related to matter-antimatter asymmetry in future long baseline neutrino experiments easier.

• Research Organization: Univ. of Houston, TX (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: FG02-07ER41518
• OSTI ID: 1158781
• Report Number(s): DOE-HOUSTON-41518
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
Neutrino mixing
theta13
matter-antimatter asymmetry
nuclear reactor
inverse beta-decay reaction