Probing light sterile neutrinos in medium baseline reactor experiments

Understand

Medium baseline reactor experiments (Double Chooz, Daya Bay and RENO) provide a unique opportunity to test the presence of light sterile neutrinos.

• We analyze the data of these experiments in the search of sterile neutrinos and also test the robustness of theta_13 determination in the presence of sterile neutrinos.
• We show that existence of a light sterile neutrino state improves the fit to these data moderately.
• We also show that the measured value of theta_{13} by these experiments is reliable even in the presence of sterile neutrinos, and the reliability owes significantly to the Daya Bay and RENO data.