Measurement of electron antineutrino oscillation with 1958 days of operation at Daya Bay

Abstract

We report a measurement of electron antineutrino oscillation from the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment with nearly 4 million reactor $\overlineν_{e}$ inverse beta decay candidates observed over 1958 days of data collection. The installation of a Flash-ADC readout system and a special calibration campaign using different source enclosures reduce uncertainties in the absolute energy calibration to less than 0.5% for visible energies larger than 2 MeV. The uncertainty in the cosmogenic $^9$Li and $^8$He background is reduced from 45% to 30% in the near detectors. A detailed investigation of the spent nuclear fuel history improves its uncertainty from 100% to 30%. Analysis of the relative $\overlineν_{e}$ rates and energy spectra among detectors yields $\sin^{2}2θ_{13} = 0.0856\pm 0.0029$ and $Δm^2_{32}=(2.471^{+0.068}_{-0.070})\times 10^{-3}~\mathrm{eV}^2$ assuming the normal hierarchy, and $Δm^2_{32}=-(2.575^{+0.068}_{-0.070})\times 10^{-3}~\mathrm{eV}^2$ assuming the inverted hierarchy.

6 pages, 4 figures, and 1 table. v4: the published version