The RENO experiment is a short baseline neutrino experiment in Korea aiming to measure the neutrino mixing angle theta_13 or set limit to sin^2(2 theta_13) less than 0.02. This document describes physics goals, experimental site, detector design, scintillator, electronics, calibration, simulation, and physics reach.
RENO (Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation) is the reactor neutrino experiment which has been taking data from August 2011 with two identical near and far detectors at Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant, Yonggwang, Korea. Using 1,500 live days of data, $\sin^2 2θ_{13}$ and $|Δm^2_{ee}|$ are updated using spectral measurements: $\sin^2 2θ_{13} = 0.086 \pm 0.006 ({\rm stat.}) \pm 0.005 ({\rm syst.})$ and $|Δm^2_{ee}| = 2.61+0.15-0.16 ({\rm stat.}) \pm 0.09 ({\rm syst.}) (\times 10^{-3} {\rm eV^2})$. The 5 MeV excess dependency on the reactor thermal power rate is again clearly observed with the i…
RENO (Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation) is the first reactor neutrino experiment which began data-taking in 2011 with two identical near and far detectors in Yonggwang, Korea. Using 1500 live days of data, sin^2(2θ_13) and |Δm^2_ee| are updated using spectral measurements: sin^2(2θ_13) = 0.086 +/- 0.006 (stat.) +/- 0.005 (syst.) and |Δm^2_ee| = 2.61+0.15-0.16 (stat.) +/- 0.09 (syst.) (x10^-3 eV^2). The correlation between the 5 MeV excess rate and the reactor thermal power is again clearly observed with the increased data set.
We report a fuel-dependent reactor electron antineutrino ($\overlineν_e$) yield using six 2.8 GW$_{\text{th}}$ reactors in the Hanbit nuclear power plant complex, Yonggwang, Korea. The analysis uses $850\,666$ $\overlineν_e$ candidate events with a background fraction of 2.0 % acquired through inverse beta decay (IBD) interactions in the near detector for 1807.9 live days from August 2011 to February 2018. Based on multiple fuel cycles, we observe a fuel $^{235}$U dependent variation of measured IBD yields with a slope of $(1.51 \pm 0.23) \times 10^{-43} $cm$^2$/fission and measure a total ave…
A new experiment, which is called as NEOS (NEutrino Oscillation at Short baseline), is proposed on the site of Hanbit reactors at Yonggwang, South Korea, to investigate a reactor antineutrino anomaly. A homogeneous NEOS detector having a 1000-L target volume has been constructed and deployed at the tendon gallery ~25 m away from the reactor core. A linear alkylbenzene (LAB) is used as a main base solvent of the NEOS detector. Furthermore, a di-isopropylnaphthalene (DIN) is added to improve the light output and pulse shape discrimination (PSD) ability. The ratio of LAB to DIN is 90:10. PPO (3 g…
The Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation (RENO) has been taking electron antineutrino ($\overlineν_{e}$) data from the reactors in Yonggwang, Korea, using two identical detectors since August 2011. Using roughly 500 live days of data through January 2013 we observe 290,775 (31,514) reactor $\overlineν_{e}$ candidate events with 2.8 (4.9)% background in the near (far) detector. The observed visible positron spectra from the reactor $\overlineν_{e}$ events in both detectors show discrepancy around 5 MeV with regard to the prediction from the current reactor $\overlineν_{e}$ model. Based o…
The RENO experiment reports measured flux and energy spectrum of reactor electron antineutrinos\,($\overlineν_e$) from the six reactors at Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant. The measurements use 966\,094\,(116\,111)\,$\overlineν_e$ candidate events with a background fraction of 2.39\%\,(5.13\%), acquired in the near\,(far) detector, from August 2011 to March 2020. The inverse beta decay (IBD) yield is measured as (5.852$\,\pm\,$0.124$) \times 10^{-43}$\,cm$^2$/fission, corresponding to 0.941\,$\pm$ 0.019 of the prediction by the Huber and Mueller (HM) model. A reactor $\overlineν_e$ spectrum is obtai…
The RENO experiment reports more precisely measured values of $θ_{13}$ and $|Δm_{ee}^2|$ using $\sim$2\,200 live days of data. The amplitude and frequency of reactor electron antineutrino ($\overlineν_e$) oscillation are measured by comparing the prompt signal spectra obtained from two identical near and far detectors. In the period between August 2011 and February 2018, the far (near) detector observed 103\,212 (850\,666) electron antineutrino candidate events with a background fraction of 4.7\% (2.0\%). A clear energy and baseline dependent disappearance of reactor $\overlineν_e$ is observed…
RENO (Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation) has made a definitive measurement of the smallest mixing angle theta13 in 2012, based on the disappearance of electron antineutrinos. More precise measurements have been obtained and presented on the mixing angle and the reactor neutrino spectrum, using ~800 days of data. We have observed an excess of IBD prompt spectrum near 5 MeV with respect to the most commonly used models. The excess is found to be consistent with coming from reactors. We have also successfully measured the reactor neutrino flux with a delayed signal of neutron capture on…
We report a search result for a light sterile neutrino oscillation with roughly 2200 live days of data in the RENO experiment. The search is performed by electron antineutrino ($\overlineν_e$) disappearance taking place between six 2.8 GW$_{\text{th}}$ reactors and two identical detectors located at 294 m (near) and 1383 m (far) from the center of reactor array. A spectral comparison between near and far detectors can explore reactor $\overlineν_e$ oscillations to a light sterile neutrino. An observed spectral difference is found to be consistent with that of the three-flavor oscillation model…
The RENO experiment has analyzed about 500 live days of data to observe an energy dependent disappearance of reactor $\overlineν_e$ by comparison of their prompt signal spectra measured in two identical near and far detectors. In the period between August 2011 and January 2013, the far (near) detector observed 31541 (290775) electron antineutrino candidate events with a background fraction of 4.9\% (2.8\%). The measured prompt spectra show an excess of reactor $\overlineν_e$ around 5 MeV relative to the prediction from a most commonly used model. A clear energy and baseline dependent disappear…
One of the main goals of RENO (Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation) is to measure the smallest neutrino mixing angle θ13 using reactor neutrinos in Korea. RENO is the first reactor experiment taking data with two identical detectors in different locations (Near and Far), which is critical to reduce systematic uncertainty in reactor neutrino flux. Our data taking has been almost continuous since Aug. 2011 and we have collected about 434,000 (54,000) electron anti-neutrinos in the Near (Far) detector by 2013. Using this data (about 800 live days) we present a new result on θ13: sin22θ13 …
We have carefully examined, in both analytical and numerical ways, how small the terrestrial matter effects can be in a given medium-baseline reactor antineutrino oscillation experiment like JUNO or RENO-50. Taking the ongoing JUNO experiment for example, we show that the inclusion of terrestrial matter effects may reduce the sensitivity of the neutrino mass ordering measurement by Δχ^2_{\rm MO} \simeq 0.6, and a neglect of such effects may shift the best-fit values of the flavor mixing angle θ_{12} and the neutrino mass-squared difference Δ_{21} by about 1σto 2σin the future data analysis. In…
The Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation (RENO) experiment has been taking data using two identical liquid scintillator detectors of 44.5 tons since August 2011. The experiment has observed the disappearance of reactor neutrinos in their interactions with free protons, followed by neutron capture on hydrogen. Based on 1500 live days of data taken with 16.8 GW$_{th}$ reactors at the Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant in Korea, the near (far) detector observes 567690 (90747) electron antineutrino candidate events with a delayed neutron capture on hydrogen. This provides an independent measurement…
We present a reactor model independent search for sterile neutrino oscillation using 2\,509\,days of RENO near detector data and 180 days of NEOS data. The reactor related systematic uncertainties are significantly suppressed as both detectors are located at the same reactor complex of Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant. The search is performed by electron antineutrino\,($\overlineν_e$) disappearance between six reactors and two detectors with baselines of 294\,m\,(RENO) and 24\,m\,(NEOS). A spectral comparison of the NEOS prompt-energy spectrum with a no-oscillation prediction from the RENO measureme…
Rector neutrinos have been a tool to investigate neutrino properties for more than 60 years. The reactor neutrino flux was measured throughout 80s-90s. In the 2000s, reactor neutrino oscillations at large baselines were observed by the KamLAND experiment and later in 2012 at short baselines by the Daya Bay, Double Chooz and RENO experiments. Reactor neutrino experiments have significantly contributed to our current knowledge of oscillation parameters. The detector technology has been majorly improved over decades and we have entered era of precise measurements. The recent absolute measurement …
Precision measurements of leptonic mixing parameters and the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy are the primary goals of the forthcoming medium-baseline reactor antineutrino experiments, such as JUNO and RENO-50. In this work, we investigate the impact of nonstandard neutrino interactions (NSIs) on the measurements of {sin^2 theta_{12}, Delta m^2_{21}} and {sin^2 theta_{13}, Delta m^2_{31}}, and on the sensitivity to the neutrino mass hierarchy, at the medium-baseline reactor experiments by assuming a typical experimental setup. It turns out that the true mixing parameter sin^2 theta…
This publication provides a coherent treatment for the reactor neutrino flux uncertainties suppression, specially focussed on the latest $θ_{13}$ measurement. The treatment starts with single detector in single reactor site, most relevant for all reactor experiments beyond $θ_{13}$. We demonstrate there is no trivial error cancellation, thus the flux systematic error can remain dominant even after the adoption of multi-detector configurations. However, three mechanisms for flux error suppression have been identified and calculated in the context of Double Chooz, Daya Bay and RENO sites. Our an…
There is a well known 2$σ$ tension in the measurements of the solar $Δm^2$ between KamLAND and SNO/Super-KamioKANDE. Precise determination of the solar $Δm^2$ is especially important in connection with current and future long baseline CP violation measurements. Reference \cite{Seo:2018rrb} points out that currently running short baseline reactor neutrino experiments, Daya Bay and RENO, can also constrain solar $Δm^2$ value as demonstrated by a GLoBES simulation with a limited systematic uncertainty consideration. In this work, the publicly available data, from Daya Bay (1,958 days) and RENO (2…
Reactor experiments are well suited to probe the possible loss of coherence of neutrino oscillations due to wave-packets separation. We combine data from the short-baseline experiments Daya Bay and the Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation (RENO) and from the long baseline reactor experiment KamLAND to obtain the best current limit on the reactor antineutrino wave-packet width, $σ> 2.1 \times 10^{-4}$ nm at 90% CL. We also find that the determination of standard oscillation parameters is robust, i.e., it is mostly insensitive to the presence of hypothetical decoherence effects once one c…
We demonstrate that the currently running short baseline reactor experiments, especially Daya Bay, can put a significant upper bound on $Δm^2_{21}$. This novel approach to determining $Δm^2_{21}$ can be performed with the current data of both Daya Bay \& RENO and provides additional information on $Δm^2_{21}$ in a different $L/E$ range ($\sim$ 0.5 km/MeV) for an important consistency check on the 3 flavor massive neutrino paradigm. Upper limits by Daya Bay and RENO and a possible lower limit from Daya Bay, before the end of 2020, will be the only new information on this important quantity unti…
New generation of three reactor neutrino experiments have made definitive measurements of the smallest neutrino mixing angle theta13 in 2012, based on the disappearance of electron antineutrinos. More precise measurements of the mixing angle have been made as well as the squared mass difference between electron neutrinos. A rather large value of theta13 has opened a new window to find the CP violation phase and to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy. Future reactor experiments, JUNO and RENO50, are proposed to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy and to make highly precise measurements of t…
We explore how well reactor antineutrino experiments can constrain or measure the loss of quantum coherence in neutrino oscillations. We assume that decoherence effects are encoded in the size of the neutrino wave-packet, $σ$. We find that the current experiments Daya Bay and the Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation (RENO) already constrain $σ>1.0\times 10^{-4}$ nm and estimate that future data from the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) would be sensitive to $σ<2.1\times 10^{-3}$ nm. If the effects of loss of coherence are within the sensitivity of JUNO, we expect $σ$ to …
The successful measurements of the smallest neutrino mixing angle, $θ_{13}$, in 2012 by the short (1$\sim$2 km) baseline reactor neutrinos experiments, Daya Bay, RENO, and Double Chooz, have triggered a golden age of neutrino physics. The three experiments have been improving the $θ_{13}$ measurements by accumulating event statistics and reducing systematic uncertainties. Now the $θ_{13}$ measurement is the most precise one among the mixing angles in the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix. The most updated $θ_{13}$ and $Δm^{2}_{ee}$ measurements from these experiments are reported here as …
We study constraints on the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) from neutrino oscillations in short-baseline reactor experiments. We calculate the survival probability of reactors antineutrinos at the leading order in the SMEFT expansion, that is including linear effects of dimension-6 operators. It is shown that, at this order, reactor experiments alone cannot probe charged-current contact interactions between leptons and quarks that are of the (pseudo)vector (V$\pm$A) or pseudo-scalar type. We also note that flavor-diagonal (pseudo)vector coefficients do not have observable effects…
Reactor neutrinos have been an important tool for both discovery and precision measurement in the history of neutrino studies. Since the first generation of reactor neutrino experiments in the 1950s, the detector technology has been greatly advanced. New ideas, new knowledge, and modern software also enhanced the power of the experiments. The current reactor neutrino experiments, Daya Bay, Double Chooz, and RENO have led neutrino physics into the precision era. In this article, we will review these developments and accumulations, address the key issues in designing a state-of-art reactor neutr…
The RENO experiment has been in operation since August 2011 to measure reactor antineutrino disappearance using identical near and far detectors. For accurate measurements of neutrino mixing parameters and efficient data taking, it is crucial to monitor and control the detector in real time. Environmental conditions also need to be monitored for stable operation of detectors as well as for safety reasons. In this article, we report the design, hardware, operation, and performance of the slow control system.
After the neutrino mixing angle $θ_{13}$ has been precisely measured by the reactor antineutrino experiments, one of the most important open questions left in neutrino physics is the neutrino mass hierarchy. Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is designed to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy (MH) without exploring the matter effect. The JUNO site location is optimized to have the best sensitivity for the mass hierarchy determination. JUNO will employ a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector located in a laboratory 700 meters underground. The excellent energy resolution and PMT c…
We report a novel correlated background in the antineutrino detection using the inverse beta decay reaction. Spontaneous fissions and $(α,n)$ reactions in peripheral materials of the antineutrino detector, such as borosilicate glass of photomultipliers, produce fast neutrons and prompt gamma rays. If the shielding from the material to the detector target were not thick enough, neutrons and gammas could enter the target volume and mimic antineutrino signals. This paper revisits the yields and energy spectra of neutrons produced in B$(α,n)$N and F$(α,n)$Na reactions. A Geant4 based simulation ha…
After several gravitational wave transients were discovered since 2015, studying neutrino signals coincident with the gravitational wave events now becomes an important mission for the existing neutrino experiments. Unfortunately, no candidate neutrinos have been found yet. This article introduces a method to find the neutrino excess to search for the potential neutrinos from gravitational wave sources at the future reactor neutrino experiment (such as JUNO and RENO-50). According to our calculations and simulations, the non-detection of $\barν_e$ associated with gravitational waves at the nom…
The experimental bound on lifetime of nu_3, the neutrino mass eigenstate with the smallest nu_e component, is much weaker than those of nu_1 and nu_2 by many orders of magnitude to which the astrophysical constraints apply. We argue that the future reactor neutrino oscillation experiments with medium-baseline (~ 50 km), such as JUNO or RENO-50, has the best chance of placing the most stringent constraint on nu_3 lifetime among all neutrino experiments which utilize the artificial source neutrinos. Assuming decay into invisible states, we show by a detailed chi^2 analysis that the nu_3 lifetime…
A brief overview of the development of neutrino detectors for long-baseline oscillation experiments at accelerators and reactors is presented. Basic principles and main features of detectors of running accelerator experiments T2K and NOvA sensitive to a first level of CP violation and neutrino mass hierarchy, and reactor experiments Daya Bay, RENO and Double Chooz which measured the mixing angle θ_13 are discussed. A variety of different experimental techniques is proposed and developed for the next generation oscillation experiments: a 20 kt scintillator detector for the reactor experiment JU…
We report the neutrino mass hierarchy (MH) sensitivity of medium baseline reactor neutrino experiments with multiple detectors. Sensitivity of determining the MH can be significantly improved by adding a near detector and combining both the near and far detectors. The size of the sensitivity improvement is related to accuracy of the individual mass-splitting measurements and requires strict control on the relative energy scale uncertainty of the near and far detectors. We study the impact of both baseline and target mass of the near detector on the combined sensitivity. A figure-of-merit is de…
