Eur. Phys. J. A (2016) 52: 341
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2016-16341-5

Letter to the Editor

Reactor antineutrinos and nuclear physics

Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, 53706, Madison, WI, USA

^* e-mail: baha@physics.wisc.edu

Received: 8 September 2016
Accepted: 13 November 2016
Published online: 24 November 2016

Abstract

Short-baseline reactor neutrino experiments successfully measured the neutrino parameters they set out to measure, but they also identified a shape distortion in the 5-7 MeV range as well as a reduction from the predicted value of the flux. Nuclear physics input into the calculations of reactor antineutrino spectra needs to be better refined if this anomaly is to be interpreted as due to sterile neutrino states.