Chooz and Perry: New Experiments for Long Baseline Reactor Neutrino Oscillations

Abstract

We discuss the Chooz experiment, a long baseline search for neutrino vacuum oscillations, which will utilize a large gadolinium-loaded liquid scintillation detector one km from a large nuclear power station in France. The 300-meter (water equivalent) underground site of the detector reduces cosmic ray muons, the main source of background in this type of experiment, by a factor of 300, thereby allowing clean detection of antineutrinos from the reactor. The experimental goal is to probe \Delta m^2 values down to 1E-3 eV^2 for large values of sin^2 2\theta and mixing angles to 0.08 for favorable regions of \Delta m^2. A subsequent experiment which will have a 13 km baseline at the former IMB site in Ohio and which can reach \Delta m^2 = 8E-5 eV^2 is also briefly described.