Search for a light sterile neutrino at Daya Bay

by Yasuhiro Nakajima (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (US))

Tuesday 18 Nov 2014, 12:30 → 13:30 US/Pacific

Kavli 3 (SLAC)

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment is designed to measure the neutrino mixing angle theta₁₃ with unprecedented precision. The experiment detects antineutrinos from Daya Bay reactor complex with eight functionally identical Antineutrino Detectors, which are distributed among three experimental halls. We started data taking in December 2011, and have collected more than one million reactor antineutrino interactions. The resulting statistical precision also allows for sensitive searches of phenomena beyond the standard model. We have searched for mixing to a light sterile antineutrino using the first 217 days of data from the Daya Bay experiment. The relative spectral distortion observed for electron antineutrino disappearance was found to be consistent with that of the three-flavor oscillation model, setting the most stringent limits on sin²(2theta₁₄) at 10^-3 eV² < Delta m²₄₁ < 0.1 eV². In this talk, I will discuss the details of this sterile antineutrino search, as well as other recent results from the Daya Bay experiment.

Slides

• nakajima_2014-11-18_SLAC.pdf
• P3040186.jpg
• SterileNeutrinoContours_Illust_draft2.jpg