Speaker
Description
The Reactor Experiment for Neutrinos and Exotics (RENE) addresses the Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly by searching for sterile neutrinos in the Δm² ≈ 2 eV² region. The detector will be deployed in the tendon gallery of South Korea’s Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant, approximately 24 meters from the reactor core. The detector features a 270-liter cylindrical target of Gd-loaded liquid scintillator (Gd-LS) enclosed by a 3,000-liter box-shaped liquid scintillator (LS) gamma catcher, instrumented with dual 20-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). A key technical innovation is this gamma catcher design, which sharpens energy resolution to approximately 4% for prompt energies above 4 MeV. This enhancement significantly boosts the experiment's sensitivity in the sterile neutrino parameter space relative to previous short-baseline reactor analyses. Currently, the detector is undergoing commissioning at the RENO far site, gathering data using cosmic muons and calibration sources. Final underground installation will proceed following the completion of nuclear security and fire safety assessments and pending approval from the power plant. This presentation will detail the detector's design and construction, highlight recent commissioning results, and outline the current status of deployment preparations.