Deuteron disintegration by reactor antineutrinos

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a hypothesized new neutrino-nucleon interaction affects deuteron disintegration by reactor antineutrinos, providing analytical and numerical insights relevant to neutrino detection experiments.

Contribution

It presents a detailed analysis of deuteron disintegration by reactor antineutrinos considering a new interaction, with implications for experimental detection methods.

Findings

Analytical and numerical characteristics of disintegration are provided.

Highlights the importance of neutron detection efficiency and quenching gas role.

Discusses results from three reactor experiments with heavy water.

Abstract

The existence of a new interaction involving the electron neutrino and the nucleons, which has received a convincing confirmation through a good agreement between the theoretical and experimental results concerning all observable processes with solar neutrinos, should also inevitably manifest itself in the deuteron disintegration by reactor antineutrinos neutral currents. In this paper, the analytical and numerical characteristics of such a disintegration are presented. The attention is drawn to the problem of finding the neutron registration efficiency, discussed in the preparation of the experiment at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and in a number of special studies, to the role of quenching gas in proportional counters with helium-3 and to three performed reactor experiments with heavy water.