Abstract
Validation of the effective conversion method in the reactor antineutrino flux calculation is examined using the \textit{ab initio} calculation of the electron and antineutrino spectra from the state-of-the-art nuclear database. It turns out that neglecting the shape variation of beta decay branches between the allowed and forbidden transitions would induce significant bias in the total inverse-beta-decay yields and energy spectral distributions. We propose a new realization of the conversion method with both the allowed and forbidden virtual branches, and apply it to both the \textit{simulated} data from the nuclear database and \textit{real} data from the fission measurements at ILL by virtue of statistical properties of the allowed and forbidden decays in the database. Two kinds of dominant uncertainty sources are identified and it turns out that the new realization of the conversion calculation can largely reduce the rate and spectral bias and thus present a reliable prediction of the antineutrino fluxes if accurate beta decay information is available in the high endpoint energy range.
Highlights
Electron antineutrinos from nuclear reactors have played important roles in the history of neutrino physics for studying fundamental properties of neutrinos
In general there are two categories of predicting methods, where the first one is the ab initio summation method with the nuclear database, and the second one is the effective conversion method based on the measurements of aggregate electron spectra associated with fission isotopes
In this work we have examined the reliability and accuracy of the conversion method using the ab initio calculations of the electron and antineutrino spectra by means of the state-of-the-art nuclear database
Summary
Electron antineutrinos from nuclear reactors have played important roles in the history of neutrino physics for studying fundamental properties of neutrinos (see the reviews in Refs. [1,2,3]). Since electron antineutrinos and electrons are simultaneously produced in one single beta decay branch, the isotopic antineutrino fluxes are obtained with the conversion method by assuming a set of virtual beta decay branches and fitting the electron spectra of fission isotopes to be consistent with the corresponding measurements. In this method, the shape characteristics and.
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