The Daya Bay reactor antineutrino experiment is designed to measure the last unknown neutrino mixing angle to less than 0.01 in sin2 2 13 at... Show moreThe Daya Bay reactor antineutrino experiment is designed to measure the last unknown neutrino mixing angle to less than 0.01 in sin2 2 13 at the 90% con dence level after 3 years of running. The fully commissioned experiment consists of three experimental halls, measuring the antineutrino ux from six reactor cores. The various subsystems of the Daya Bay experiment involved in reaching this ultimate sensitivity are discussed. With full physics running not scheduled until summer 2012, a fully functional near site with 40 tons of target mass can be used to measure sin2 2 13 to 0.08 at the 90% con dence level in less than 6 months of data taking beginning in summer of 2011. Early physics at the Daya Bay hall does not bene t from the a near detector to measure the reactor antineutrino ux. Understanding and predicting the reactor antineutrino ux is therefore extremely important for early physics. A method of predicting the time-dependent antineutrino spectrum at the Daya Bay near site using publicly available information is presented. Using the antineutrino ux predictions, early physics measurements involving fuel cycles and refueling shutdowns are explored. Ph.D. in Physics, July 2011 Show less
