1302.0624 (Emilio Ciuffoli et al.)

Optimizing Medium Baseline Reactor Neutrino Experiments    [PDF]

Emilio Ciuffoli, Jarah Evslin, Xinmin Zhang

10 years from now medium baseline reactor neutrino experiments will attempt to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy from the observed antineutrino spectra. In this letter we present the results of more than four million detailed simulations of such experiments, studying the dependence of the probability of successfully determining the hierarchy upon the analysis method, the neutrino mass matrix parameters, reactor flux models and, in particular, combinations of baselines. We show that the strong dependence of the hierarchy determination upon mass differences and flux models found by Qian et al. results from a spurious dependence of the Fourier analysis upon the high energy tail of the reactor spectrum which can be removed by using a weighted Fourier transform. Such experiments necessarily use flux from multiple reactors at distinct baselines, smearing the oscillation signal and thus impeding the determination of the hierarchy. Using the results of our simulations, we determine the optimal baselines and corresponding detector locations.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0624