Reactor antineutrino anomaly in light of recent flux model refinements

Abstract

We study the status of the reactor antineutrino anomaly in light of recent reactor flux models obtained with the conversion and summation methods. We present a new improved calculation of the inverse beta decay yields of the standard Huber-Mueller model and those of the new models. We show that the reactor rates and the fuel evolution data are consistent with the predictions of the Kurchatov Institute conversion model and with those of the Estienne-Fallot summation model, leading to a plausible robust demise of the reactor antineutrino anomaly. We show that the results of several goodness of fit tests favor the Kurchatov Institute and Estienne-Fallot models over other models that we considered. The data-driven isotopic inverse beta decay yields can also be obtained from global fits of the experimental rate and evolution data, which provide an anomaly-free model for the prediction of future experiments.