Speaker
Pablo del Amo Sanchez
(LAPP-IN2P3-CNRS / Université Savoie Mont Blanc)
Description
Interest in light sterile neutrinos has been recently revived by the
so-called Gallium and reactor neutrino anomalies. In both of them, a
deficit of detected neutrinos was observed with respect to the
expectations. Both anomalies could be explained by the oscillations
of a sterile neutrino introducing an additional $\Delta m^2$ around 1 eV$^2$.
Such oscillations should cause a tell-tale distortion of the neutrino
energy spectrum, with the known L/E dependence of neutrino oscillations.
The STEREO experiment has been designed to exploit such a signature at short baselines, thus confirming or refuting the $\Delta m^2 \simeq$ 1 eV$^2$ sterile neutrino hypothesis. The STEREO detector consists of six optically separated cells filled with
Gd-loaded liquid scintillator, where reactor anti-neutrinos are detected
through their inverse beta decay, surrounded by an external blanket of
non-loaded liquid scintillator. The experiment will be placed in early
2016 at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) at Grenoble, next to one of the
most compact nuclear reactors in operation, with detector commissioning
and data taking starting soon afterwards. We present the experiment
design, which has been finalised, its sensitivity, and the status of its
preparation.
Primary author
Pablo del Amo Sanchez
(LAPP-IN2P3-CNRS / Université Savoie Mont Blanc)
Co-author
Collaboration STEREO
(CEA-Irfu-Saclay, LAPP-IN2P3-CNRS, LPSC-IN2P3-CNRS, MPIK Heidelberg, ILL, University of Casablanca)
