Independent measurement of the neutrino mixing angle theta(13) via neutron capture on hydrogen at Daya Bay

Abstract

A new measurement of the theta(13) mixing angle has been obtained at the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment via the detection of inverse beta decays tagged by neutron capture on hydrogen. The antineutrino events for hydrogen capture are distinct from those for gadolinium capture with largely different systematic uncertainties, allowing a determination independent of the gadolinium-capture result and an improvement on the precision of the theta(13) measurement. With a 217-day antineutrino data set obtained with six antineutrino detectors and from six 2.9 GWth reactors, the rate deficit observed at the far hall is interpreted as sin(2)2 theta(13) = 0.083 +/- 0.018 in the three-flavor oscillation model. When combined with the gadolinium-capture result from Daya Bay, we obtain sin(2)2 theta(13) = 0.089 +/- 0.008 as the final result for the six-antineutrino-detector configuration of the Daya Bay experiment.