Future searches for light sterile neutrinos at nuclear reactors

Understand

We study the optimization of a green-field, two-baseline reactor experiment with respect to the sensitivity for electron antineutrino disappearance in search of a light sterile neutrino.

• We consider both commercial and research reactors and identify as key factors the distance of closest approach and detector energy resolution.
• We find that a total of 5 tons of detectors deployed at a commercial reactor with a closest approach of 25 m can probe the mixing angle $\sin^22\theta$ down to $\sim5\times10^{-3}$ around $\Delta m^2\sim 1$ eV$^2$.
• The same detector mass deployed at a research reactor can be sensitive up to $\Delta m^2\sim20-30$ eV$^2$ assuming a closest approach of 3 m and excellent energy resolution, such as that projected for the Taishan Antineutrino Observatory.