Abstract
The Daya Bay, Double Chooz and RENO experiments recently observed a significant distortion in their detected reactor antineutrino spectra, being at odds with the current predictions. Although such a result suggests to revisit the current reactor antineutrino spectra modeling, an alternative scenario, which could potentially explain this anomaly, is explored in this letter. Using an appropriate statistical method, a study of the Daya Bay experiment energy scale is performed. While still being in agreement with the γ calibration data and B12 measured spectrum, it is shown that a O(1%) deviation of the energy scale reproduces the distortion observed in the Daya Bay spectrum, remaining within the quoted calibration uncertainties. Potential origins of such a deviation, which challenge the energy calibration of these detectors, are finally discussed.
Highlights
Reactor antineutrino experiments have played a leading role in neutrino physics starting with the discovery of the electron antineutrino in 1956 [1, 2], through the first observed oscillation pattern in KamLAND [11], up to recent high precision measurements on the θ13 mixing angle [3,4,5]
The aim of the present study is to assess if a small residual nonlinearity (RNL) in the energy scale can both explain the observed reactor antineutrino spectra and calibration data
It is worth noting that the obtained RNL is still compatible with the uncertainties originally quoted by the Daya Bay (DB) collaboration (gray shaded area on Figure 2(a))
Summary
Reactor antineutrino experiments have played a leading role in neutrino physics starting with the discovery of the electron antineutrino in 1956 [1, 2], through the first observed oscillation pattern in KamLAND [11], up to recent high precision measurements on the θ13 mixing angle [3,4,5]. Two anomalies in the measured antineutrino spectra are being observed. The second one is a shape distortion in the 4–6 MeV region, often quoted as a “bump” or “shoulder” in the spectra. It should be stressed out that the relation between these two anomalies is not straightforward since shape distortion does not necessarily imply a change in the total rate
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