A.G. Olshevsky

DANSS: Detector of the reactor AntiNeutrino based on Solid Scintillator

The DANSS project is aimed at creating a relatively compact neutrino spectrometer which does not contain any flammable or other dangerous liquids and may therefore be located very close to the core of an industrial power reactor. As a result, it is expected that high neutrino flux would provide about 15,000 IBD interactions per day in the detector with a sensitive volume of 1 m3. High segmentation of the plastic scintillator will allow to suppress a background down to a ~1% level. Numerous tests performed with a simplified pilot prototype DANSSino under a 3 GWth reactor of the Kalinin NPP have demonstrated operability of the chosen design. The DANSS detector surrounded with a composite shield is movable by means of a special lifting gear, varying the distance to the reactor core in a range from 10 m to 12 m. Due to this feature, it could be used not only for the reactor monitoring, but also for fundamental research including short-range neutrino oscillations to the sterile state. Supposing one-year measurement, the sensitivity to the oscillation parameters is expected to reach a level of sin2(2θnew) ~ 5 × 10−3 with Δ m2 ⊂ (0.02–5.0) eV2.

Search for sterile neutrinos at the DANSS experiment

Abstract DANSS is a highly segmented 1 m3 plastic scintillator detector. Its 2500 one meter long scintillator strips have a Gd-loaded reflective cover. The DANSS detector is placed under an industrial 3.1 G W th reactor of the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant 350 km NW from Moscow. The distance to the core is varied on-line from 10.7 m to 12.7 m. The reactor building provides about 50 m water-equivalent shielding against the cosmic background. DANSS detects almost 5000 ν ˜ e per day at the closest position with the cosmic background less than 3%. The inverse beta decay process is used to detect ν ˜ e . Sterile neutrinos are searched for assuming the 4ν model (3 active and 1 sterile ν). The exclusion area in the Δ m 14 2 , sin 2 ⁡ 2 θ 14 plane is obtained using a ratio of positron energy spectra collected at different distances. Therefore results do not depend on the shape and normalization of the reactor ν ˜ e spectrum, as well as on the detector efficiency. Results are based on 966 thousand antineutrino events collected at three different distances from the reactor core. The excluded area covers a wide range of the sterile neutrino parameters up to sin 2 ⁡ 2 θ 14 0.01 in the most sensitive region.

Neutrino Physics at Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant: 2002 – 2017

The results of the research in the field of neutrino physics obtained at Kalinin nuclear power plant during 15 years are presented. The investigations were performed in two directions. The first one includes GEMMA I and GEMMA II experiments for the search of the neutrino magnetic moment, where the best result in the world on the value of the upper limit of this quantity was obtained. The second direction is tied with the measurements by a solid scintillator detector DANSS designed for remote on-line diagnostics of nuclear reactor parameters and search for short range neutrino oscillations. DANSS is now installed at the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant under the 4-th unit on a movable platform. Measurements of the antineutrino flux demonstrated that the detector is capable to reflect the reactor thermal power with an accuracy of about 1.5% in one day. Investigations of the neutrino flux and their energy spectrum at different distances allowed to study a large fraction of a sterile neutrino parameter space indicated by recent experiments and perform the reanalysis of the reactor neutrino fluxes. Status of the short range oscillation experiment is presented together with some preliminary results based on about 170 days of active data taking during the first year of operation.

Study of radiation hardness of pure CsI crystals for Belle-II calorimeter

A study of the radiation hardness of pure CsI crystals 30 cm long was performed with a uniformly absorbed dose of up to 14.3 krad. This study was initiated by the proposed upgrade of the end cap calorimeter of the Belle-II detector, using pure CsI crystals. A set of 14 crystals of truncated pyramid shape used in this study was produced at the Institute for Scintillation Materials NAS from 14 different ingots grown with variations of the growing technology. Interrelationship of crystal scintillation characteristics, radiation hardness and the growing technology was observed.