Hamburg 2016 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 102: Niederenergie-Neutrinophysik III

T 102.7: Talk

Thursday, March 3, 2016, 18:20–18:35, VMP9 SR 07

Results of the Nucifer reactor neutrino experiment — •Christian Buck and Manfred Lindner — MPIK Heidelberg

Nuclear reactors are a strong and pure source of electron antineutrinos. With neutrino experiments close to compact reactor cores new insights into neutrino properties and reactor physics can be obtained. The Nucifer experiment is one of the pioneers in this class of very short baseline projects. Its detector to reactor distance is only about 7m. The data obtained in the last years allowed to estimate the plutonium concentration in the reactor core by the neutrino flux measurement. This is of interest for safeguard applications and non proliferation efforts.

The antineutrinos in Nucifer are detected via the inverse beta decay on free protons. Those Hydrogen nuclei are provided by 850 liters of organic liquid scintillator. For higher detection efficiency and background reduction the liquid is loaded with Gadolinium. Despite all shielding efforts and veto systems the background induced by the reactor activity and cosmogenic particles is still the main challenge in the experiment.

The principle of the Nucifer detector is similar to the needs of upcoming experiments searching for sterile neutrinos. Therefore, the Nucifer results are also valuable input for the understanding and optimization of those next generation projects. The observation of sterile neutrinos would imply new physics beyond the standard model.