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The DANSS Experiment: Recent Results and Perspective

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Abstract

The DANSS experiment is a scintillation spectrometer of reactor antineutrinos placed at the Unit 4 reactor of the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant about 300 km northwest of Moscow. The main fundamental aim of the experiment is search for sterile neutrinos. The experiment was commissioned in April 2016 and regular data taking has been carried out since October 2016. 7.7 million of inverse beta-decay events have been collected by March 2023. A vast exclusion area of the sterile neutrino parameters was set. In the region of the best sensitivity the limit reached \({\text{sin}}2{{\theta }^{2}} = 5 \times {{10}^{{ - 3}}}\). The reactor power has been monitored for 6.5 years. The dispersion that is not related to single measurement statistics is below 0.5%, which gives an upper estimate of the precision of the standard NPP power measurements at the level of at least 0.5%. New scintillator detectors designed to upgrade the DANSS facility were tested at an accelerator beam. Light yield better than 140 ph.e./MeV was obtained. This paper describes the results obtained during the last year and the facility upgrade plans.

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Notes

  1. The statistical error is less than 0.1% and can be neglected.

  2. The average light yield of modern strips is 35 p.e./MeV.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The DANSS Collaboration is grateful to the Kalinin NPP Administration and the staff of the Radiation Safety Department for their constant help and support

Funding

This work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant no. 23-12-00085.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research Center Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia

    I. G. Alekseev

  2. Lebedev Physical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119991, Moscow, Russia

    I. G. Alekseev

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  1. I. G. Alekseev
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Correspondence to I. G. Alekseev.

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Translated by D. Sventsitsky

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Based on the presentation given by the author on behalf of the DANSS Collaboration at the European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics (EPS-HEP2023), August 21–25, 2023, Hamburg, Germany.

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Alekseev, I.G. The DANSS Experiment: Recent Results and Perspective. Bull. Lebedev Phys. Inst. 51, 8–15 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3103/S1068335623601796

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