The STEREO Experiment

N. Allemandou (1) , H. Almazán , P. del Amo Sanchez (1) , L. Bernard (2) , C. Bernard (2) , A. Blanchet (3) , A. Bonhomme (3) , G. Bosson (2) , O. Bourrion (2) , J. Bouvier (2) , C. Buck , V. Caillot (4) , M. Chala (2) , P. Champion (3) , P. Charon (3) , A. Collin (3) , P. Contrepois (3) , G. Coulloux (3) , B. Desbrières (4) , G. Deleglise (1) , W. El Kanawati (1) , J. Favier (1) , S. Fuard (4) , I. Gomes Monteiro (1) , B. Gramlich , J. Haser , V. Helaine (2) , M. Heusch (2) , M. Jentschel (4) , F. Kandzia (4) , G. Konrad , U. Köster (4) , S. Kox (2) , C. Lahonde-Hamdoun (3) , J. Lamblin (2) , A. Letourneau (3) , D. Lhuillier (3) , C. Li (2) , M. Lindner , L. Manzanillas (1) , T. Materna (3) , O. Méplan (2) , A. Minotti (3, 4) , C. Monon (4) , F. Montanet (2) , F. Nunio (3) , F. Peltier (1) , Y. Penichot (3) , M. Pequignot (3) , H. Pessard (1) , Y. Piret (3) , G. Prono (3) , G. Quéméner (5) , J.-S. Real (2) , C. Roca , T. Salagnac (2) , V. Sergeyeva (1) , S. Schoppmann , L. Scola (3) , J.-P. Scordilis (2) , T. Soldner (4) , A. Stutz (2) , D. Tourres (2) , C. Vescovi (2) , S. Zsoldos (2)

1 LAPP - Laboratoire d'Annecy de Physique des Particules
2 LPSC - Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie
3 SERMA - Service d’Études des Réacteurs et de Mathématiques Appliquées
4 ILL - Institut Laue-Langevin
5 LPCC - Laboratoire de physique corpusculaire de Caen

The STEREO experiment is a very short baseline reactor antineutrino experiment aiming at testing the hypothesis of light sterile neutrinos as an explanation of the deficit of the observed neutrino interaction rate with respect to the predicted rate, known as the Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly. The detector center is located 10 m away from the compact, highly 235U enriched core of the research nuclear reactor of the Institut Laue Langevin in Grenoble, France. This paper describes the STEREO site, the detector components and associated shielding designed to suppress the external sources of background which were characterized on site. It reports the performances in terms of detector response and energy reconstruction.

Mots clés: Liquid detectors; Neutrino detectors; activity report; antineutrino: nuclear reactor; neutrino: sterile; neutrino: detector; performance; background: suppression; shielding; detector: design

Domaines: Instrumentations et Détecteurs [physics.ins-det]; Physique des Hautes Energies - Expérience [hep-ex]

N. Allemandou, H. Almazán, P. del Amo Sanchez, L. Bernard, C. Bernard, et al.. The STEREO Experiment. Journal of Instrumentation, 2018, 13 (07), pp.P07009. ⟨10.1088/1748-0221/13/07/P07009⟩. ⟨hal-01781948⟩