Abstract
Hints for the existence of a sterile neutrino at nuclear reactors are reexamined using two updated predictions for the fluxes of antineutrinos produced in fissions. These new predictions diverge in their preference for the rate deficit anomaly, relative to previous analyses, but the anomaly in the ratios of measured antineutrino spectra persists. We comment on upcoming experiments and their ability to probe the preferred region of the sterile-neutrino parameter space in the electron neutrino disappearance channel.
Highlights
The evidence for the existence of additional neutrino species, which we generically call “sterile neutrinos,” can be broadly decomposed into three classes: anomalous νe disappearance at reactors [1]; anomalous νe disappearance at GALLEX [2] and SAGE [3], i.e., the gallium anomaly; and anomalous νe appearance at LSND [4] and MiniBooNE [5]
We begin with combined analyses of the inverse beta decay (IBD) event rates measured at the short-baseline experiments at Bugey [35,36], Gösgen [37], ILL [38,39], Krasnoyarsk [40,41,42], Nucifer [43], Savannah River [44], and Rovno [45,46]
Our analysis is constructed using ratios of the IBD rates measured at these experiments relative to the three-neutrino predictions for the three reactor antineutrino flux models mentioned previously
Summary
The evidence for the existence of additional neutrino species, which we generically call “sterile neutrinos,” can be broadly decomposed into three classes: anomalous νe disappearance at reactors [1]; anomalous νe disappearance at GALLEX [2] and SAGE [3], i.e., the gallium anomaly; and anomalous νe appearance at LSND [4] and MiniBooNE [5]. These individual pieces, do not form a consistent whole. Our results are obtained with the publicly available software GLOBES [20,21]; the underlying data libraries will be published in an accompanying software paper [22]
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