Measurement of the detection systematic uncertainty in the Double Chooz experiment

Abstract

Double Chooz is a reactor antineutrino oscillation experiment designed to make a precision measurement of the neutrino mixing angle θ13. The new methods developed for measuring the dominant components of the antineutrino detection systematic uncertainty using several neutron sources as well as the studies on the neutron transport boundary effects on the target are described. Benefiting from a revised signal selection criteria and increased statistics, the 0.5% precision level achieved on the detection systematic uncertainty represents almost a factor two improvement with respect to the previous result and leads to a more precise θ13 measurement. Building upon this improvement, the phase with two detectors will profit from an even better detection systematic uncertainty thanks to the cancellation of correlated uncertainties, granting a high precision θ13 measurement.