Final Measurement of the ^{235}U Antineutrino Energy Spectrum with the PROSPECT-I Detector at HFIR

This Letter reports one of the most precise measurements to date of the antineutrino spectrum from a purely ^{235}U-fueled reactor, made with the final dataset from the PROSPECT-I detector at the High Flux Isotope Reactor. By extracting information from previously unused detector segments, this anal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2023-07, Vol.131 (2), p.021802-021802
Main Authors: Andriamirado, M, Balantekin, A B, Bass, C D, Bergeron, D E, Bernard, E P, Bowden, N S, Bryan, C D, Carr, R, Classen, T, Conant, A J, Deichert, G, Delgado, A, Diwan, M V, Dolinski, M J, Erickson, A, Foust, B T, Gaison, J K, Galindo-Uribari, A, Gilbert, C E, Gokhale, S, Grant, C, Hans, S, Hansell, A B, Heeger, K M, Heffron, B, Jaffe, D E, Jayakumar, S, Ji, X, Jones, D C, Koblanski, J, Kunkle, P, Kyzylova, O, LaBelle, D, Lane, C E, Langford, T J, LaRosa, J, Littlejohn, B R, Lu, X, Maricic, J, Mendenhall, M P, Meyer, A M, Milincic, R, Mueller, P E, Mumm, H P, Napolitano, J, Neilson, R, Nikkel, J A, Nour, S, Palomino Gallo, J L, Pushin, D A, Qian, X, Roca, C, Rosero, R, Searles, M, Surukuchi, P T, Sutanto, F, Tyra, M A, Venegas-Vargas, D, Weatherly, P B, Wilhelmi, J, Woolverton, A, Yeh, M, Zhang, C, Zhang, X
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Language:English
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Summary:This Letter reports one of the most precise measurements to date of the antineutrino spectrum from a purely ^{235}U-fueled reactor, made with the final dataset from the PROSPECT-I detector at the High Flux Isotope Reactor. By extracting information from previously unused detector segments, this analysis effectively doubles the statistics of the previous PROSPECT measurement. The reconstructed energy spectrum is unfolded into antineutrino energy and compared with both the Huber-Mueller model and a spectrum from a commercial reactor burning multiple fuel isotopes. A local excess over the model is observed in the 5-7 MeV energy region. Comparison of the PROSPECT results with those from commercial reactors provides new constraints on the origin of this excess, disfavoring at 2.0 and 3.7 standard deviations the hypotheses that antineutrinos from ^{235}U are solely responsible and noncontributors to the excess observed at commercial reactors, respectively.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.021802