The RENO experiment has observed the disappearance of reactor electron antineutrinos, consistent with neutrino oscillations, with a significance of 4.9 standard deviations. Antineutrinos from six $2.8\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{GW}}_{\mathrm{th}}$ reactors at the Yonggwang Nuclear Power Plant in Korea, are detected by two identical detectors located at 294 and 1383 m, respectively, from the reactor array center. In the 229 d data-taking period between 11 August 2011 and 26 March 2012, the far (near) detector observed 17102 (154088) electron antineutrino candidate events with a background fraction of 5.5% (2.7%). The ratio of observed to expected numbers of antineutrinos in the far detector is $0.920\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.009(\mathrm{stat})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.014(\mathrm{syst})$. From this deficit, we determine ${sin﻿}^{2}2{\ensuremath{\theta}}_{13}=0.113\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.013(\mathrm{stat})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.019(\mathrm{syst})$ based on a rate-only analysis.

Observation of reactor electron antineutrinos disappearance in the RENO experiment.

This is a review paper about neutrino mass and mixing and flavour model building strategies based on discrete family symmetry. After a pedagogical introduction and overview of the whole of neutrino physics, we focus on the PMNS mixing matrix and the latest global fits following the Daya Bay and RENO experiments which measure the reactor angle. We then describe the simple bimaximal, tri-bimaximal and golden ratio patterns of lepton mixing and the deviations required for a non-zero reactor angle, with solar or atmospheric mixing sum rules resulting from charged lepton corrections or residual trimaximal mixing. The different types of see-saw mechanism are then reviewed as well as the sequential dominance mechanism. We then give a mini-review of finite group theory, which may be used as a discrete family symmetry broken by flavons either completely, or with different subgroups preserved in the neutrino and charged lepton sectors. These two approaches are then reviewed in detail in separate chapters including mechanisms for flavon vacuum alignment and different model building strategies that have been proposed to generate the reactor angle. We then briefly review grand unified theories (GUTs) and how they may be combined with discrete family symmetry to describe all quark and lepton masses and mixing. Finally, we discuss three model examples which combine an SU(5) GUT with the discrete family symmetries A₄, S₄ and Δ(96).

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0034-4885/76/5/056201/pdf

Neutrino Mass and Mixing with Discrete Symmetry

This paper describes the physics case for a new fixed target facility at CERN SPS. The SHiP (search for hidden particles) experiment is intended to hunt for new physics in the largely unexplored domain of very weakly interacting particles with masses below the Fermi scale, inaccessible to the LHC experiments, and to study tau neutrino physics. The same proton beam setup can be used later to look for decays of tau-leptons with lepton flavour number non-conservation, $\tau \to 3\mu $ and to search for weakly-interacting sub-GeV dark matter candidates. We discuss the evidence for physics beyond the standard model and describe interactions between new particles and four different portals—scalars, vectors, fermions or axion-like particles. We discuss motivations for different models, manifesting themselves via these interactions, and how they can be probed with the SHiP experiment and present several case studies. The prospects to search for relatively light SUSY and composite particles at SHiP are also discussed. We demonstrate that the SHiP experiment has a unique potential to discover new physics and can directly probe a number of solutions of beyond the standard model puzzles, such as neutrino masses, baryon asymmetry of the Universe, dark matter, and inflation.

/pdf/a-facility-to-search-for-hidden-particles-at-the-cern-sps-3pxaggnjt6.pdf

A facility to search for hidden particles at the CERN SPS: the SHiP physics case.

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a 20 kton multi-purpose underground liquid scintillator detector, was proposed with the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy (MH) as a primary physics goal. The excellent energy resolution and the large fiducial volume anticipated for the JUNO detector offer exciting opportunities for addressing many important topics in neutrino and astro-particle physics. In this document, we present the physics motivations and the anticipated performance of the JUNO detector for various proposed measurements. Following an introduction summarizing the current status and open issues in neutrino physics, we discuss how the detection of antineutrinos generated by a cluster of nuclear power plants allows the determination of the neutrino MH at a 3–4σ significance with six years of running of JUNO. The measurement of antineutrino spectrum with excellent energy resolution will also lead to the precise determination of the neutrino oscillation parameters ${\mathrm{sin}}^{2}{\theta }_{12}$, ${\rm{\Delta }}{m}_{21}^{2}$, and $| {\rm{\Delta }}{m}_{{ee}}^{2}| $ to an accuracy of better than 1%, which will play a crucial role in the future unitarity test of the MNSP matrix. The JUNO detector is capable of observing not only antineutrinos from the power plants, but also neutrinos/antineutrinos from terrestrial and extra-terrestrial sources, including supernova burst neutrinos, diffuse supernova neutrino background, geoneutrinos, atmospheric neutrinos, and solar neutrinos. As a result of JUNO's large size, excellent energy resolution, and vertex reconstruction capability, interesting new data on these topics can be collected. For example, a neutrino burst from a typical core-collapse supernova at a distance of 10 kpc would lead to ∼5000 inverse-beta-decay events and ∼2000 all-flavor neutrino–proton ES events in JUNO, which are of crucial importance for understanding the mechanism of supernova explosion and for exploring novel phenomena such as collective neutrino oscillations. Detection of neutrinos from all past core-collapse supernova explosions in the visible universe with JUNO would further provide valuable information on the cosmic star-formation rate and the average core-collapse neutrino energy spectrum. Antineutrinos originating from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium in the Earth can be detected in JUNO with a rate of ∼400 events per year, significantly improving the statistics of existing geoneutrino event samples. Atmospheric neutrino events collected in JUNO can provide independent inputs for determining the MH and the octant of the ${\theta }_{23}$ mixing angle. Detection of the (7)Be and (8)B solar neutrino events at JUNO would shed new light on the solar metallicity problem and examine the transition region between the vacuum and matter dominated neutrino oscillations. Regarding light sterile neutrino topics, sterile neutrinos with ${10}^{-5}\,{{\rm{eV}}}^{2}\lt {\rm{\Delta }}{m}_{41}^{2}\lt {10}^{-2}\,{{\rm{eV}}}^{2}$ and a sufficiently large mixing angle ${\theta }_{14}$ could be identified through a precise measurement of the reactor antineutrino energy spectrum. Meanwhile, JUNO can also provide us excellent opportunities to test the eV-scale sterile neutrino hypothesis, using either the radioactive neutrino sources or a cyclotron-produced neutrino beam. The JUNO detector is also sensitive to several other beyondthe-standard-model physics. Examples include the search for proton decay via the $p\to {K}^{+}+\bar{\nu }$ decay channel, search for neutrinos resulting from dark-matter annihilation in the Sun, search for violation of Lorentz invariance via the sidereal modulation of the reactor neutrino event rate, and search for the effects of non-standard interactions. The proposed construction of the JUNO detector will provide a unique facility to address many outstanding crucial questions in particle and astrophysics in a timely and cost-effective fashion. It holds the great potential for further advancing our quest to understanding the fundamental properties of neutrinos, one of the building blocks of our Universe.

/pdf/neutrino-physics-with-juno-4p3nncbvqh.pdf

Neutrino Physics with JUNO

We perform a global analysis of neutrino oscillation data, including high-precision measurements of the neutrino mixing angle ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{13}$ at reactor experiments, which have confirmed previous indications in favor of ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{13}g0$. Recent data presented at the Neutrino 2012 conference are also included. We focus on the correlations between ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{13}$ and the mixing angle ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{23}$, as well as between ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{13}$ and the neutrino $CP$-violation phase $\ensuremath{\delta}$. We find interesting indications for ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{23}l\ensuremath{\pi}/4$ and possible hints for $\ensuremath{\delta}\ensuremath{\sim}\ensuremath{\pi}$, with no significant difference between normal and inverted mass hierarchy.

Global analysis of neutrino masses, mixings and phases: entering the era of leptonic CP violation searches

Reactor experiment for neutrino oscillation (RENO) began data-taking from August 2011. It successfully observed reactor antineutrino disappearance in April 2012 to measure the smallest mixing angle of θ 13 . Two identical detectors, one at near location and the other at far location, are constructed at the Yonggwang nuclear power plant in South Korea, to compare the observed reactor neutrino fluxes. Each RENO detector is filled with 16 mass tons of Gadolinium loaded liquid scintillator (GdLS) in the neutrino target region, and with 28 mass tons of unloaded liquid scintillator (LS) in the γ - catcher region surrounding the target. LS was developed to satisfy chemical, physical, optical properties, and safety requirements. Linear alkyl benzene (LAB) was chosen as a solvent because of its high flash-point, sufficient light yield, and being environmentally friendly. GdLS is carefully developed to keep a long attenuation length and high light yield for a long time period. In this paper, we report the characteristics and mass production of the RENO LS and GdLS.

S. Y. Kim

Papers

Observation of reactor electron antineutrinos disappearance in the RENO experiment.

Production and optical properties of Gd-loaded liquid scintillator for the RENO neutrino detector