Precision Measurement of sin^2 theta_W at a Reactor

TL;DR

This paper proposes a reactor-based experiment to measure sin^2 theta_W with about 1% precision, utilizing antineutrino-electron scattering and improved event identification methods, achieving competitive accuracy with existing results.

Contribution

It introduces a novel strategy for measuring sin^2 theta_W at reactors with reduced systematic uncertainties and an improved event identification technique.

Findings

Achieves an estimated error of 0.0019 in sin^2 theta_W measurement.

Demonstrates the feasibility of using reactor near detectors for precision electroweak measurements.

Provides a method with different systematic contributions compared to previous experiments.

Abstract

This paper presents a strategy for measuring sin^2 theta_W to ~1% at a reactor-based experiment, using antineutrinos electron elastic scattering. This error is comparable to the NuTeV, SLAC E158, and APV results on sin^2 theta_W, but with substantially different contributions to the systematics. An improved method for identifying antineutrino proton events, which serve both as a background and as a normalization sample, is described. The measurement can be performed using the near detector of the presently proposed reactor-based oscillation experiments. We conclude that an absolute error of delta(sin^2 theta_W)=0.0019 may be achieved.