Abstract
A joint determination of the reactor antineutrino spectra resulting from the fission of U235 and Pu239 has been carried out by the Daya Bay and PROSPECT Collaborations. This Letter reports the level of consistency of U235 spectrum measurements from the two experiments and presents new results from a joint analysis of both data sets. The measurements are found to be consistent. The combined analysis reduces the degeneracy between the dominant U235 and Pu239 isotopes and improves the uncertainty of the U235 spectral shape to about 3%. The U235 and Pu239 antineutrino energy spectra are unfolded from the jointly deconvolved reactor spectra using the Wiener-SVD unfolding method, providing a data-based reference for other reactor antineutrino experiments and other applications. This is the first measurement of the U235 and Pu239 spectra based on the combination of experiments at low- and highly enriched uranium reactors.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 081801 |
| Journal | Physical Review Letters |
| Volume | 128 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 25 2022 |
Funding
The Daya Bay experiment is supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the CAS Center for Excellence in Particle Physics, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Guangdong provincial government, the Shenzhen municipal government, the China General Nuclear Power Group, the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic, the Charles University Research Centre (UNCE), the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, the National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research of Chile, We acknowledge Yellow River Engineering Consulting Co., Ltd., and China Railway 15th Bureau Group Co., Ltd., for building the underground laboratory. We are grateful for the ongoing cooperation from the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group and China Light & Power Company. The PROSPECT experiment is supported by the following sources: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics under Awards No. DE-SC0016357 and No. DE-SC0017660 to Yale University, under Award No. DE-SC0017815 to Drexel University, University of Hawaii DOE Grant No. DE-SC0010504, under Award No. DE-SC0008347 to Illinois Institute of Technology, under Award No. DE-SC0016060 to Temple University, under Contract No. DE-SC0012704 to Brookhaven National Laboratory, and under Work Proposal No. SCW1504 to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344 and by Oak Ridge National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. Additional funding for the experiment was provided by the Heising-Simons Foundation under Grant No. 2016-117 to Yale University. J. K. G. is supported through the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program and A. C. performed work with support from the Nuclear Nonproliferation International Safeguards Fellowship Program sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administrations Office of International Nuclear Safeguards (NA-241). This work was also supported by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF), and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery program under Grant No. RGPIN-418579, and Province of Ontario. We further acknowledge support from Yale University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Temple University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory LDRD program, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We gratefully acknowledge the support and hospitality of the High Flux Isotope Reactor and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| China General Nuclear Power Group | |
| Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna | |
| Ministry of Education in Taiwan | |
| National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research | |
| National Nuclear Security Administrations Office of International Nuclear Safeguards | NA-241 |
| Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China | |
| Shenzhen municipal government | |
| UNCE | |
| University of Hawaii DOE | DE-SC0016060, DE-SC0010504, DE-SC0008347 |
| Yellow River Engineering Consulting Co., Ltd. | |
| National Science Foundation | |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| National Institute of Standards and Technology | |
| Yale University | DE-SC0017815 |
| Office of Science | |
| High Energy Physics | DE-SC0017660, DE-SC0016357 |
| Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | DE-AC52-07NA27344 |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | DE-AC05-00OR22725 |
| Brookhaven National Laboratory | |
| Univerzita Karlova v Praze | |
| Drexel University | |
| Temple University | SCW1504, DE-SC0012704 |
| Illinois Institute of Technology | |
| Heising-Simons Foundation | 2016-117 |
| UT-Battelle | |
| Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada | RGPIN-418579 |
| National Natural Science Foundation of China | |
| Ministerstvo Školství, Mládeže a Tělovýchovy | |
| Chinese Academy of Sciences | |
| Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China | |
| Government of Guangdong Province | |
| Canada First Research Excellence Fund | |
| CAS Center for Excellence in Particle Physics |