Comment on Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 191802 (2012): "Observation of Reactor Electron Antineutrino Disappearance in the RENO Experiment"

TL;DR

This paper reanalyzes RENO experiment data on reactor electron antineutrino disappearance, refining the measurement of the neutrino oscillation parameter sin^2 2theta13 and exploring its dependence on energy bounds.

Contribution

It provides a revised analysis of RENO data, yielding a different value for sin^2 2theta13 and highlighting an unexpected energy dependence in the measurement.

Findings

Revised sin^2 2theta13 value of 0.135

Observed dependence of measurement on prompt energy bound

Confirmation of neutrino oscillation evidence with updated analysis

Abstract

The RENO experiment recently reported the disappearance of reactor electron antineutrinos consistent with neutrino oscillations, with a significance of 4.9 standard deviations. The published ratio of observed to expected number of antineutrinos in the far detector is R=0.920 +-0.009(stat.) +-0.014(syst.) and corresponds to sin^2 2theta13 = 0.113 +-0.013(stat.) +-0.019(syst), using a rate-only analysis. In this letter we reanalyze the data and we find a ratio R=0.903 +-0.01(stat.), leading to sin^2 2theta13 = 0.135. Moreover we show that the sin^2 2theta13 measurement still depend of the prompt high energy bound beyond 4 MeV, contrarily to the expectation based on neutrino oscillation.