Search for Neutrino Oscillations at the Palo Verde Nuclear Reactors

Boehm, F.; Busenitz, J.; Cook, B.; Gratta, G.; Henrikson, H.; Kornis, J.; Lawrence, D.; Lee, K. B.; McKinny, K.; Miller, L.; Novikov, V.; Piepke, A.; Ritchie, B.; Tracy, D.; Vogel, P.; Wang, Y-F.; Wolf, J.

Search for Neutrino Oscillations at the Palo Verde Nuclear Reactors

Authors

Description

We report on the initial results from a measurement of the anti-neutrino flux and spectrum at a distance of about 800 m from the three reactors of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station using a segmented gadolinium-loaded scintillation detector. We find that the anti-neutrino flux agrees with that predicted in the absence of oscillations to better than 5%, excluding at 90% CL $\rm\barν_e - \barν_x$ oscillations with $Δm^2 > 1.12\times 10^{-3}$ eV^2 for maximal mixing and $\sin^2{2θ} > 0.21$ for large $Δm^2$.
4 Pages, 3 figures