Experimental Parameters for a Cerium 144 Based Intense Electron Antineutrino Generator Experiment at Very Short Baselines

TL;DR

This paper explores the design and challenges of an experiment using a Cerium-144 based antineutrino source near a liquid scintillator detector to investigate potential sterile neutrino oscillations at very short distances.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the expected signals, backgrounds, and systematic uncertainties for a novel short-baseline antineutrino experiment using Cerium-144.

Findings

Estimated antineutrino signals and backgrounds for the proposed setup

Identified technical challenges and systematic uncertainties

Assessed sensitivity to sterile neutrino oscillations at short baselines

Abstract

The standard three-neutrino oscillation paradigm, associated with small squared mass splittings $\ll 0.1\ \mathrm{eV^2}$, has been successfully built up over the last 15 years using solar, atmospheric, long baseline accelerator and reactor neutrino experiments. However, this well-established picture might suffer from anomalous results reported at very short baselines in some of these experiments. If not experimental artifacts, such results could possibly be interpreted as the existence of at least an additional fourth sterile neutrino species, mixing with the known active flavors with an associated mass splitting $\ll 0.1\ \mathrm{eV^2}$, and being insensitive to standard weak interactions. Precision measurements at very short baselines (5 to 15 m) with intense MeV electronic antineutrino emitters can be used to probe these anomalies. In this article, the expected antineutrino signal and backgrounds of a generic experiment which consists of deploying an intense beta minus radioactive source inside or in the vicinity of a large liquid scintillator detector are studied. The technical challenges to perform such an experiment are identified, along with quantifying the possible source and detector induced systematics, and their impact on the sensitivity to the observation of neutrino oscillations at short baselines.