The Reactor Anomaly after Daya Bay and RENO

Emilio Ciuffoli; Hong Li; Jarah Evslin

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The Reactor Anomaly after Daya Bay and RENO

Emilio Ciuffoli, Jarah Evslin, Hong Li

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Submitted 24 May 2012

abstract compiled · 2026-09-23 · no language-model review

The authors' main claim The resulting anomaly is consistent with that found at very short baselines and suggests a downward revision of RENO's result for theta_13.

how it is stated · hedged possibility 0.95 read the record →

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What the abstract itself states, as probabilities: claims first 0.03 · states limitation 0.37 · human participants 0.02 · controlled comparison 0.20 · randomized assignment 0.01 · states quantitative result 0.86 · compares with prior results 0.95 · mentions code or data availability 0.02.

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arXiv listing abstract v2. Results and the main claim are underlined; show every role.

Gallium and short baseline reactor neutrino experiments indicate a short-distance anomalous disappearance of electron antineutrinos which, if interpreted in terms of neutrino oscillations, would lead to a sterile neutrino mass inconsistent with standard cosmological models. This anomaly is difficult to measure at 1 km baseline experiments because its disappearance effects are degenerate with that of theta_13. The flux normalization independent measurement of theta_13 at Daya Bay breaks this degeneracy, allowing an unambiguous differentiation of 1-3 neutrino oscillations and the anomalous disappearance at Double Chooz and RENO. The resulting anomaly is consistent with that found at very short baselines and suggests a downward revision of RENO's result for theta_13. A MCMC global analysis of current cosmological data shows that a quintom cosmology is just compatible at 2 sigma with a sterile neutrino with the right mass to reproduce the reactor anomaly and to a lesser extent the gallium and LSND/MiniBooNE anomalies. However models in which the sterile neutrino acquires a chameleon mass easily satisfy the cosmological bounds and also reduce the tension between LSND and KARMEN.

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#	sentence	role	the authors' own work	states the main conclusion	strength
s0	Gallium and short baseline reactor neutrino experiments indicate a short-distance anomalous disappearance of electron antineutrinos which, if interpreted in terms of neutrino oscillations, would lead to a sterile neutrino mass inconsistent with standard cosmological models.	background 1.00	0.07	0.12	hedged possibility 0.88
s1	This anomaly is difficult to measure at 1 km baseline experiments because its disappearance effects are degenerate with that of theta_13.	background 0.71	0.11	0.03	asserted 0.99
s2	The flux normalization independent measurement of theta_13 at Daya Bay breaks this degeneracy, allowing an unambiguous differentiation of 1-3 neutrino oscillations and the anomalous disappearance at Double Chooz and RENO.	contribution 0.29	0.30	0.38	asserted 1.00
s3	The resulting anomaly is consistent with that found at very short baselines and suggests a downward revision of RENO's result for theta_13.	result 0.79	0.69	0.34	hedged possibility 0.95
s4	A MCMC global analysis of current cosmological data shows that a quintom cosmology is just compatible at 2 sigma with a sterile neutrino with the right mass to reproduce the reactor anomaly and to a lesser extent the gallium and LSND/MiniBooNE anomalies.	result 0.79	0.61	0.17	asserted 0.51
s5	However models in which the sterile neutrino acquires a chameleon mass easily satisfy the cosmological bounds and also reduce the tension between LSND and KARMEN.	interpretation 0.79	0.23	0.19	asserted 0.65

What kind of paper the classifier reports this is: theoretical result 0.49 · evidence from analysis of existing data 0.98.

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The paper

Original abstract

Gallium and short baseline reactor neutrino experiments indicate a short-distance anomalous disappearance of electron antineutrinos which, if interpreted in terms of neutrino oscillations, would lead to a sterile neutrino mass inconsistent with standard cosmological models. This anomaly is difficult to measure at 1 km baseline experiments because its disappearance effects are degenerate with that of theta_13. The flux normalization independent measurement of theta_13 at Daya Bay breaks this degeneracy, allowing an unambiguous differentiation of 1-3 neutrino oscillations and the anomalous disappearance at Double Chooz and RENO. The resulting anomaly is consistent with that found at very short baselines and suggests a downward revision of RENO's result for theta_13. A MCMC global analysis of current cosmological data shows that a quintom cosmology is just compatible at 2 sigma with a sterile neutrino with the right mass to reproduce the reactor anomaly and to a lesser extent the gallium and LSND/MiniBooNE anomalies. However models in which the sterile neutrino acquires a chameleon mass easily satisfy the cosmological bounds and also reduce the tension between LSND and KARMEN.

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References

Forward citations

Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: weighing the neutrino mass using the galaxy power spectrum of the CMASS sample
astro-ph.CO 2012-11 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

The summed neutrino mass is bounded at Sigma m_nu < 0.340 eV (95 percent CL) in flat Lambda CDM and < 0.821 eV when dark energy, curvature, running and tensors are all freed, using the BOSS CMASS DR9 galaxy power spectrum.
Global fit to three neutrino mixing: critical look at present precision
hep-ph 2012-09 accept novelty 5.0 of 10

Combining all 2012 neutrino oscillation data, the fit finds a nonzero theta_13 at about 10 sigma, a theta_23 about 2 sigma from maximal, and only 1.5 sigma or less of preference for either octant, either mass ordering...
Light sterile neutrinos
hep-ph 2015-07 conditional novelty 3.0 of 10

A review of eV-scale sterile neutrinos argues that reactor, Gallium, and LSND anomalies can be fit by 3+1 short-baseline oscillations, while acknowledging appearance-disappearance and cosmological tensions.

How the literature uses it

9 arXiv papers cite this in 13 sentences

Each citing sentence is taken from the citing paper's LaTeX source and typed by Pith's classifier. A label appears at probability 0.8 or more (0.95 for support), a contest at 0.7 or more; the quoted words are the citing authors'. How each label was checked · JSON

Papers citing it · 4 sentences without a confident label

Uses its method or tool 3 papers

Following the method described in [ref] , we calculate the averaged survival probability of neutrinos in $i$-th detector ($i=$ near,far) in the following way: [equation] where $f_ij$ is the fraction of antineutrino flux at the $i$-th detector coming from the $j$-th reactor, given in Table 1 of [ref] ; $d_ij$ is the weighted distance of the $i$-th detector from the $j$-th reactor and $ρ_j$ is the fractional energy distribution of neutrinos emitted from the $j$-th reactor.

Probing light sterile neutrinos in medium baseline reactor experiments · RENO · 1.00
Motivated by this situation we follow here the approach of Ref. [ref] and study the dependence of the determined value of $θ_13$ on the assumptions about the reactor fluxes, see also [ref] .

Global fit to three neutrino mixing: critical look at present precision · Determination of $θ_13$ and Flux Uncertainties · 0.86
Following the method described in [ref] , we calculate the averaged survival probability of neutrinos in $i$-th detector ($i=$ near,far) in the following way:

Phenomenology of the Sterile Neutrinos · RENO · 1.00

Cites it as background 4 papers

It has been analyzed by several authors [ref] .

Light sterile neutrinos · The reactor antineutrino anomaly · 0.96
Also, in [ref] , the correlation of $θ_13$ with active-sterile mixing parameters has been studied with an emphasize on the reactor anomaly and its connection to the cosmological data.

Probing light sterile neutrinos in medium baseline reactor experiments · Introduction · 0.95
Also, in [ref] , the correlation between $θ_13$ and the active-sterile mixing parameters have been studied with an emphasize on the reactor anomaly and its connection to the cosmological data.

Phenomenology of the Sterile Neutrinos · Introduction: Light sterile neutrinos in medium baseline experiments · 0.98

What it cites · 51 sentences without a confident label

Uses the method or tool of 1 paper

To estimate errors we used the pull parameter method of the second version of Ref. [ref] , with $χ^2$ given by their Eq. (2).

Observation of Reactor Electron Antineutrino Disappearance in the RENO Experiment · Disappearance Results from RENO · 1.00

Uses data or values from 8 papers

In this note we will combine the results of the reactor neutrino experiments Double Chooz [ref] , Daya Bay [ref] and RENO [ref] to simultaneously estimate the reactor anomaly and $θ_13$.

Observation of Reactor Electron Antineutrino Disappearance in the RENO Experiment · Introduction · 0.98
In this note we will combine the results of the reactor neutrino experiments Double Chooz [ref] , Daya Bay [ref] and RENO [ref] to simultaneously estimate the reactor anomaly and $θ_13$.

Observation of electron-antineutrino disappearance at Daya Bay · Introduction · 0.98
In this note we will combine the results of the reactor neutrino experiments Double Chooz [ref] , Daya Bay [ref] and RENO [ref] to simultaneously estimate the reactor anomaly and $θ_13$.

Indication for the disappearance of reactor electron antineutrinos in the Double Chooz experiment · Introduction · 0.98

Compares with 3 papers

It is consistent with the analysis of Ref. [ref] for this flux choice.

Evidence of theta(13)>0 from global neutrino data analysis · Disappearance Results from Double Chooz · 0.89
The redshift dependence that we found is much stronger than that found in Ref. [ref] , reflecting the fact that the Union2.1 supernova dataset that we used contains about twice as many supernova at redshift $z>1$ than the Union2 dataset [ref] used in their analysis.

Constraints on massive sterile plus active neutrino species in non minimal cosmologies · Satisfying the cosmological constraints · 0.95
The redshift dependence that we found is much stronger than that found in Ref. [ref] , reflecting the fact that the Union2.1 supernova dataset that we used contains about twice as many supernova at redshift $z>1$ than the Union2 dataset [ref] used in their analysis.

The Hubble Space Telescope Cluster Supernova Survey: V. Improving the Dark Energy Constraints Above z>1 and Building an Early-Type-Hosted Supernova Sample · Satisfying the cosmological constraints · 0.95

Cites as support 2 papers

As has already been seen in the global fits in Refs. [ref] , greater reactor anomalies imply smaller mixing angles.

Evidence of theta(13)>0 from global neutrino data analysis · Introduction · 0.97
As has already been seen in the global fits in Refs. [ref] , greater reactor anomalies imply smaller mixing angles.

Where we are on $\theta_{13}$: addendum to "Global neutrino data and recent reactor fluxes: status of three-flavour oscillation parameters" · Introduction · 0.97

Cites as background 2 papers

After this paper was completed we received the preprints [ref] which combine data from the same three experiments.

Global status of neutrino oscillation parameters after Neutrino-2012 · Introduction · 0.81
After this paper was completed we received the preprints [ref] which combine data from the same three experiments.

Global analysis of neutrino masses, mixings and phases: entering the era of leptonic CP violation searches · Introduction · 0.81

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