Improved predictions of reactor antineutrino spectra

Abstract

Precise predictions of the antineutrino spectra emitted by nuclear reactors is a key ingredient in measurements of reactor neutrino oscillations as well as in recent applications to the surveillance of power plants in the context of nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. We report new calculations including the latest information from nuclear databases and a detailed error budget. The first part of this work is the so-called ab initio approach where the total antineutrino spectrum is built from the sum of all $\ensuremath{\beta}$ branches of all fission products predicted by an evolution code. Systematic effects and missing information in nuclear databases lead to final relative uncertainties in the $10--20%$ range. A prediction of the antineutrino spectrum associated with the fission of $^{238}\mathrm{U}$ is given based on this ab initio method. For the dominant isotopes we developed a more accurate approach combining information from nuclear databases and reference electron spectra associated with the fission of $^{235}\mathrm{U}$, $^{239}\mathrm{Pu}$, and $^{241}\mathrm{Pu}$, measured at Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in the 1980s. We show how the anchor point of the measured total $\ensuremath{\beta}$ spectra can be used to suppress the uncertainty in nuclear databases while taking advantage of all the information they contain. We provide new reference antineutrino spectra for $^{235}\mathrm{U}$, $^{239}\mathrm{Pu}$, and $^{241}\mathrm{Pu}$ isotopes in the 2--8 MeV range. While the shapes of the spectra and their uncertainties are comparable to those of the previous analysis of the ILL data, the normalization is shifted by about $+3%$ on average. In the perspective of the reanalysis of past experiments and direct use of these results by upcoming oscillation experiments, we discuss the various sources of errors and their correlations as well as the corrections induced by off-equilibrium effects.