Measurements of the Absolute Reactor Antineutrino Counting Rates in the DANSS Experiment

Abstract

DANSS is a one cubic meter highly segmented solid scintillator detector placed under a 3.1 GW industrial reactor at the Kalinin NPP (Russia) on a movable platform. The distance from the reactor core center is varied from 10.9 to 12.9 m on-line. The inverse beta decay (IBD) process is used to detect antineutrinos. DANSS detects about 5000 IBD events per day with the background from cosmic muons at the level of few percent. We have also measured the reactor power using the IBD event rate during more than 6 years with the statistical accuracy 1.5\(\%\) in 2 days and with the relative systematic uncertainty of about 0.5\(\%\). New results on the search for sterile neutrino based on 7.7 million of antineutrino events are presented.