Contribution of recently measured nuclear data to reactor antineutrino energy spectra predictions

¹ SUBATECH, CNRS/IN2P3, Université de Nantes, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, 44307 Nantes, France
² IFIC (CSIC-Univ. Valencia), Valencia, Spain
³ Institute of Nuclear Research, Debrecen, Hungary

^a e-mail: fallot@subatech.in2p3.fr

Published online: 13 December 2013

Abstract

This paper attempts to summarize the actual problematic of reactor antineutrino energy spectra in the frame of fundamental and applied neutrino physics. Nuclear physics is an important ingredient of reactor antineutrino experiments. These experiments are motivated by neutrino oscillations, i.e. the measure of the θ₁₃ mixing angle. In 2011, after a new computation of the reactor antineutrino energy spectra, based on the conversion of integral data of the beta spectra from ²³⁵U, and ^239;241Pu, a deficit of reactor antineutrinos measured by short baseline experiments was pointed out. This is called the “reactor anomaly”, a new puzzle in the neutrino physics area. Since then, numerous new experimental neutrino projects have emerged. In parallel, computations of the antineutrino spectra independant from the ILL data would be desirable. One possibility is the use of the summation method, summing all the contributions of the fission product beta decay branches that can be found in nuclear databases. Studies have shown that in order to obtain reliable summation antineutrino energy spectra, new nuclear physics measurements of selected fission product beta decay properties are required. In these proceedings, we will present the computation methods of reactor antineutrino energy spectra and the impact of recent beta decay measurements on summation method spectra. The link of these nuclear physics studies with short baseline line oscillation search will be drawn and new neutrino physics projects at research reactors will be briefly presented.