Overview on neutrinos and the Daya Bay experiment

Miao He

Front. Phys. ›› 2013, Vol. 8 ›› Issue (3) : 242 -247.

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Front. Phys. ›› 2013, Vol. 8 ›› Issue (3) :242 -247. DOI: 10.1007/s11467-013-0296-x
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Overview on neutrinos and the Daya Bay experiment
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Abstract

Neutrinos are elementary particles in the Standard Model. Neutrino oscillation is a quantum mechanical phenomenon beyond the Standard Model. Neutrino oscillation can be described by two independent mass-squared differences Δ⁢m212, Δ⁢m312 (or Δ⁢m322) and a 3×3 unitary matrix, containing three mixing angles θ12, θ23, θ13, and one charge-parity (CP) phase. θ12 is about 34∘ and determined by solar neutrino experiments and the reactor neutrino experiment KamLAND. θ23 is about 45∘ and determined by atmospheric neutrino experiments and accelerator neutrino experiments. θ13 can be measured by either accelerator or reactor neutrino experiments. On Mar. 8, 2012, the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment reported the first observation of non-zero θ13 with 5.2 standard deviations. In June, with 2.5× previous data, Daya Bay improved the measurement of sin2⁡2⁢θ13=0.089±0.010⁢(stat)±0.005⁢(syst).

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neutrino oscillation / neutrino mixing / Daya Bay

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Miao He. Overview on neutrinos and the Daya Bay experiment. Front. Phys., 2013, 8 (3) : 242-247 DOI:10.1007/s11467-013-0296-x

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1 Introduction to neutrino and neutrino oscillation

Neutrinos are elementary particles in the Standard Model. There are three flavors of neutrinos, known as νe, νμ and ντ. Neutrinos exist everywhere: the nuclear fusion in the sun, β-decays of radioactivities inside the Earth, the Big Bang remnant, the supernova explosion, or interactions between cosmic rays and the atmosphere of the Earth. Besides the natural sources, neutrinos can be also produced artificially in reactors and accelerators. The neutrino flavor states are superpositions of three mass eigenstates (ν1, ν2 and ν3), which undergo quantum interference during the traveling, causing neutrino flavor changes. This phenomenon is known as neutrino oscillation. The amplitude of oscillation is connected to the mixing angles θ12, θ23 and θ13. The oscillation frequencies are determined by the difference of squared neutrino masses, Δ⁢mi⁢j2=mi2−mj2.

As of one year ago, all of the mixing parameters had been measured except for θ13. Solar neutrino experiments measured θ12 and Δ⁢m212. Atmospheric neutrino experiments measured θ23 and |Δ⁢m322|. The CHOOZ experiment set a limit of sin2⁡2⁢θ13<0.17 at 90% CL [1, 2] by the measurements of antineutrinos emitted from nuclear reactors. In 2011, two accelerator experiments T2K [3] and MINOS [4], and one reactor experiment Double Chooz [5], showed indication of none-zero θ13 at the level of 1 to 2.5 standard deviations.

In Mar. 2012, the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment reported the first observation of non-zero θ13 with 5.2 standard deviations [6]. About one month later, the RENO experiment gave a consistent result with 4.9 standard deviations [7]. In June, with 2.5× previous data, Daya Bay has improved the measurement of θ13 [8].

2 θ12 and solar neutrino experiments

In the late 1960s, the Homestake [9] experiment observed a deficit in the flux of solar neutrinos with respect to the prediction from the Standard Solar Model. This experiment had been running for nearly 30 years, and the deficit persists [10], which is known as the solar neutrino problem. In 2001, the SNO [11] experiment detected neutrinos via both charge-current and neutral-current interactions, confirming that solar electron neutrinos do not disappear, but oscillate into the muon and tau flavors. The oscillation takes place inside the Sun through a matter-induced resonance known as MSW effect [12, 13]. Further measurements of the solar neutrino flux, as well as measurements of reactor neutrino flux by the KamLAND experiment, determined Δ⁢m212 and θ12. The latest experiment values of these two oscillation parameters are Δ⁢m212=7.50−0.20+0.19×10−5⁢eV2, tan2⁡θ12=0.452−0.033+0.035 [14].

Recent results from Borexino [15–17], Super Kamiokande (Super-K) [18] and SNO [19] focused on low energy solar neutrinos between 1 MeV to 5 MeV. In this region, the solar neutrino disappearance is dominated by vacuum oscillation, compared to matter-enhanced oscillation in high energy range (> 5 MeV). These measurements not only improved the precision of oscillation parameters, but also confirmed the MSW effect and the Standard Solar Model.

3 θ23 and atmospheric neutrino experiments

The interaction of cosmic rays with the atmosphere of the Earth produces secondary particles, including hadrons and their decay products. In particular, pions produce neutrinos through the decay chain: π→μ+νμ, μ→e+νe+νμ. Neutrinos from these interactions with energies from 100 MeV to about 100 GeV are called atmospheric neutrinos. The ratio of νμ to νe should be 2 at low energy range (< 1 GeV). Since 1980s, a few experiments measured this ratio and found it’s smaller than the expectation [20], which is known as the atmospheric neutrino problem. In 1998, the Super-K experiment provided a very precise measurement of atmospheric νμ and νe flux, and found a deficit of νμ in the energy range of hundreds of MeV to a few GeV, at a distance of the diameter of the earth, which can be explained by a νμ→ντ oscillation. θ23 and |Δ⁢matm2| (which is an approximation of |Δ⁢m322|) were determined accordingly [21].

Muon neutrinos can also be produced in accelerators with a high intensity, which give a good opportunity for neutrino oscillation study. Recently, the MINOS experiment, using the neutrino beam in the Fermilab, updated the result of θ23 and |Δ⁢matm2|, by measuring the disappearance of νμ or ν¯μ at a distance of 735 km. |Δ⁢matm2|=2.39−0.27+0.22×10−3⁢eV2, sin2⁡2⁢θ23=0.96−0.04+0.04 in the neutrino mode, and |Δ⁢matm2|=2.48−0.27+0.22×10−3⁢eV2, sin2⁡(2⁢θ23)=0.97−0.08+0.03 in the antineutrino mode [22]. So the muon antineutrino disappearance is in good agreement with the neutrino result, which gives no indication of charge-parity-time reversal (CPT) violation.

4 θ13 in accelerator experiments

Besides determining θ23 and |Δ⁢matm2|, neutrinos from accelerators can also be used to measure θ13, as well as studies of CP violation and the mass ordering of ν2 and ν3. The probability of muon neutrinos translating to electron neutrinos can be described as

(1)P⁢(νμ→νe)=sin2⁡(2⁢θ13)⁢sin2⁡θ23⁢sin2⁡(1.27⁢Δ⁢m312⁢L/E)+(solar⁢term)+(CP⁢violation⁢term)+(CP⁢conservation⁢term)+(matter⁢effect⁢term)

where Δ⁢m312 can be approximated by Δ⁢matm2, E is the neutrino energy in GeV and L is the distance in km between the neutrino source and the detector (baseline). The matter effect term can be enhanced with longer baseline, which gives the information of the mass ordering (mass hierarchy) of ν2 and ν3.

The T2K experiment uses the Super-K detector to detect neutrinos from J-PARC facility in Tokai, which is 295 km away from the detector. In Jun. 2011, T2K announced the observation of six electron neutrinos compared to an expected background of 1.5, which gives an indication of none-zero θ13 with a significance of 2.5 standard deviations [3]. Soon thereafter, the MINOS experiment reported their first result of θ13, which also favors none-zero θ13, and the significance is 1.7 standard deviations [4]. Both of T2K and MINOS gave an updated measurement of θ13 in Jun. 2012 with more statistics, and improved the significance to 3.2 [23] and 2.0 [24] standard deviations, respectively.

5 θ13 in reactor experiments

For reactor-based experiments, θ13 can be extracted from the survival probability of the electron antineutrino at a distance of 1–2 km from the reactors

(2)P⁢(ν¯e→ν¯e)≈sin2⁡(2⁢θ13)⁢sin2⁡(1.27⁢Δ⁢m312⁢L/E)

where E is the ν¯eenergy in MeV and L is the distance in meters between the ν¯e source and the detector (baseline).

The past reactor experiments, such as Palo Verde [25] and CHOOZ [1], measured the neutrino flux with a single detector, and compared it with predictions from the reactor neutrino flux model, to get the oscillation probability. The sensitivity of such an absolute measurement is low due to large uncertainties from reactors and detectors. A relative measurement by detectors at two distances was proposed [26] to improve the sensitivity to oscillation due to θ13. There are three ongoing reactor experiments using the method of multiple detectors: Daya Bay, Double Chooz, and RENO. The baselines of their far detectors are 1.65 km, 1.05 km, 1.44 km, respectively. Table 1 shows the comparison of their reactor power, detector(Det.) target mass in near/far(N/F) site, overburden and estimated sensitivity of θ13 measurement after 3 years of data taking.

In Nov. 2011, Double Chooz reported their first result of θ13 based on the measured neutrino rate in the far detector. It excludes vanishing θ13 at 1.7 standard deviations [5]. A shape analysis of the neutrino energy spectrum was applied later to reduce systematic uncertainties. In Jun. 2012, the updated result improved the significance to 2.9 standard deviations [28] with more data. The result of RENO was reported in Apr. 2012 with a measurement of antineutrinos in both near and far detectors. Details of Daya Bay experiment will be introduced in the next section.

6 The Daya Bay experiment

The Daya Bay experiment was designed to provide the most precise measurement of θ13 among existing and near future experiments, with a sensitivity to sin2⁡(2⁢θ13)<0.01 at the 90% C.L. [29].

6.1 Experiment site

The experiment is located near Daya Bay, Ling Ao and Ling Ao-II nuclear power plants in southern China, 45 km from Shenzhen city. As shown in Fig. 1, there are six functionally identical reactor cores, grouped into three pairs. The last core started commercial operation by the middle of 2011. Three underground experimental halls (EHs) are connected with horizontal tunnels. Before Aug. 2012, six functionally identical antineutrino detectors (ADs) were installed. Two of them were located in EH1, one in EH2, and three near the oscillation maximum in EH3 (the far hall). The distances from the six ADs to the six cores were surveyed with the Global Positioning System (GPS) and with modern theodolites, resulting in a precision of 18 mm.

6.2 Detectors

The ν¯e interacts with proton via the inverse β-decay (IBD) reaction in gadolinium-doped liquid scintillator (Gd-LS), and releases a e+ and a neutron. The e+ deposits its energy quickly, providing a prompt signal. The energy of e+ carries most of the kinetic energy of the neutrino. The neutron is captured by Gd after an average time of ∼30 μs, then releases several gammas with a total energy of ∼8 MeV, providing a delayed signal. The coincidence of prompt-delayed signals provides a distinctive ν¯e signature.

Each experimental hall is equipped with ADs and muon veto system. Figure 2 shows a typical detector configuration taking EH1 as an example. Each AD is made of three nested cylindrical volumes separated by concentric acrylic vessels. The inner volume is filled with 20 t of Gd-LS with 0.1% Gd by weight and serves as the antineutrino target. The middle volume holds 20 t un-doped liquid scintillator (LS), for detecting gammas that escape from the target. The outer volume contains 37 t of mineral oil (MO) to protect Gd-LS and LS from radioactivities. There are 192 8-inch photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs) installed inside the mineral oil, to detect the optical photons from the neutrino interaction in the detector.

The muon veto system consists of a water shield and a resistive plate chamber (RPC). The water pool is divided into two parts, and equipped with PMTs in each part, forming inner (IWS)and outer (OWS) cherenkov detectors. The resistive plate chamber contains 9×6(9×9) modules in the near(far) site. Each module has four layers with alternating orientated readout strips providing a spatial resolution of ∼8 cm.

6.3 Data analysis

The number of detected antineutrinos Nd⁢e⁢t is given by

(3)Nd⁢e⁢t=Np4⁢π⁢L2⁢∫ϵ⁢σ⁢Ps⁢u⁢r⁢(E,L,θ13)SdE

where Np is the number of free protons in the target, L is the distance of the detector from the reactor, ε is the efficiency of detecting an antineutrino, σ is the total cross-section of the IBD process, Ps⁢u⁢r is the ν¯e→ν¯e survival probability that depends on the value of sin2⁡2⁢θ13, and S is the differential energy distribution of the antineutrino.

For a single reactor core and single near and far detectors, the ratio of the number of antineutrino events with energy E detected at distance Lf (far detector) from the reactor core to that at a distance Ln (near detector) is given by

(4)NfNn=(Np,fNp,n)⁢(LnLf)2⁢(ϵfϵn)⁢[Ps⁢u⁢r⁢(E,Lf,θ13)Ps⁢u⁢r⁢(E,Ln,θ13)]

where Np,f and Np,n refer to the number of target protons at the far and near sites, respectively. The reactor neutrino flux and IBD cross-section are totally canceled, and the relative detector efficiency (ϵf/ϵn) can be determined more precisely than the absolute efficiency.

The IBD process is identified as a prompt-delayed pair, by requiring 0.7 <Ep< 12 MeV, 6 <Ed< 12 MeV, and 1 <Δ⁢t< 200 μs, where Ep is the energy of prompt signal, Ed is the energy of delayed signal, Δ⁢t is the time interval between two signals. To remove backgrounds introduced by cosmic ray muons, the IBD candidate is removed if it follows a muon tagged by water shield or AD. A multiplicity cut requires no other > 0.7 MeV event 200 μs before the prompt signal or 200 μs after the delayed signal. Using 127 days data taken from Dec. 24, 2011 to May 11, 2012, a total number of 234 217 antineutrino candidates were measured by the six detectors.

The total residual backgrounds is 1.9% at the near halls and 4.7% at the far hall. The dominate background is accidentals, coming from two uncorrelated background radiation interactions that randomly satisfy the energy and time correlation for inverse β-decay antineutrino selection. It can be calculated by measuring the rate of both prompt- and delayed-type signals, and then estimating the probability of their accidental coincidences. The dominate uncertainty of background is from two sources of correlated signals. One is cosmogenic β-n isotope 9Li/8He, which can be measured by the time interval to previous muons. The other is from Am-C neutron calibration sources, which is estimated by Monte Carlo simulations, and constrained by the measurement of single event rate from Am-C sources. Other backgrounds such as fast neutrons produced by cosmic ray muons and 13C(α,n)16O nuclear interactions are negligible in comparison. The total uncertainty of backgrounds is 0.2% at the near halls and 0.35% at the far hall.

The expected antineutrino rate in each AD can be obtained from the reactor neutrino flux, the neutrino interaction in the target and the detection efficiency. The reactor neutrino flux is calculated from the simulated fission rate and the antineutrino spectrum per fission of four main isotopes. The thermal power data were provided by the power plant. The target mass is measured during filling of GD-LS and the liquid level is monitored during the detector running. The uncorrelated uncertainty among ADs is 0.03%. The absolute efficiency is mainly given by the Monte Carlo study, and the uncertainty is 1.9%. In a relative measurement, only the uncorrelated uncertainty is considered, which is 0.2% determined with a side-by-side comparison of ADs [30].

A blind analysis strategy is adopted for the prediction of the antineutrino rate. The true value of reactor power, baseline and target mass is blinded till the analysis algorithms and parameters are fixed, to avoid unintended biasing of a result in a particular direction.

6.4 Experiment result

Antineutrino rates in the near detectors were used to predict the rates in the far detectors assuming no oscillation. The far detectors found 0.944±0.007⁢(stat)±0.003⁢(syst) of the expected flux relative to the near sites. An analysis of the relative antineutrino rates of the six detectors in a standard three-flavor oscillation model found sin2⁡(2⁢θ13)=0.089±0.010⁢(stat)±0.005⁢(syst), as shown in Fig. 3.

A comparison of sin2⁡(2⁢θ13) measurements from different experiments is shown in Fig. 4. Using different neutrino sources such as solar neutrinos, accelerator neutrinos and reactor neutrinos, all of the experiments give consistent results.

7 Other neutrino experiments

Besides the three-flavor neutrino oscillation study, there are many other interesting topics and progresses related to neutrino experiments. An unexpected neutrino oscillation mode was reported in both accelerator and reactor experiments, known as the LSND anomaly [32] and reactor anomaly [33]. This phenomenon requires a new type of neutrinos called sterile neutrinos, which becomes a hot topic in neutrino physics. Geo-neutrinos produced in the Earth are good tools to study how the earth’s interior works. In 2010, Borexino [34] and KamLAND [35] improved the significance of geo-neutrino measurements to better than 4 standard deviations, which is revealing more information about the Earth’s heat production. The absolute mass of neutrinos can be measured by the end point of the electron energy spectrum in β-decays. The KATRIN [36] experiment aims for 0.93 eV energy resolution at the end point of 18.6 keV, corresponding to a sensitivity of 200 meV to the effective electron neutrino mass. On the other hand, an effective Majorana mass of neutrinos can be obtained from the measurement of the half-life of the neutrino-less double-β decay. This measurement may also answer the nature of massive neutrinos. In 2012, the EXO experiment [37] and the KamLAND-Zen experiment [38] obtained a lower limit for the neutrino-less double-β decay half-life as 16×1024 yr. and 5.7×1024 yr. at 90% CL, corresponding to a upper limit of 140–380 meV and 300–600 meV for the Majorana mass, respectively.

8 Summary and prospective

There was significant progress in the understanding of the neutrino in the past years. After the Daya Bay experiment measured θ13, all three mixing angles which determine the amplitudes of neutrino oscillations are known. Large θ13 makes it easier for the next generation neutrino experiments to determine neutrino mass hierarchy and search for CP violation in neutrino oscillations. The latter may answer the question that why there is more matter than antimatter in the Universe.

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