Deuteron disintegration by reactor antineutrinos

Abstract

The existence of a new interaction involving the electron neutrino and the nucleons, which has received a convincing confirmation through a good agreement between the theoretical and experimental results concerning all observable processes with solar neutrinos, should also inevitably manifest itself in the deuteron disintegration by reactor antineutrinos neutral currents. In this paper, the analytical and numerical characteristics of such a disintegration are presented. The attention is drawn to the problem of finding the neutron registration efficiency, discussed in the preparation of the experiment at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and in a number of special studies, to the role of quenching gas in proportional counters with helium-3 and to three performed reactor experiments with heavy water.