Constraining sterile neutrinos using reactor neutrino experiments

Models of neutrino mixing involving one or more sterile neutrinos have resurrected their importance in the light of recent cosmological data. In this case, reactor antineutrino experiments offer an ideal place to look for signatures of sterile neutrinos due to their impact on neutrino flavor transitions. In this work, we show that the high-precision data of the Daya Bay experiment constrain the 3+1 neutrino scenario imposing upper bounds on the relevant active-sterile mixing angle sin(2) 2 theta(14) less than or similar to 0.06 at 3 sigma confidence level for the mass-squared difference Delta m(41)(2) in the range (10(-3), 10(-1)) eV(2). The latter bound can be improved by six years of running of the JUNO experiment, sin(2) 2 theta(14) less than or similar to 0.016, although in the smaller mass range Delta m(41)(2) is an element of(10(-4), 10(-3)) eV(2). We have also investigated the impact of sterile neutrinos on precision measurements of the standard neutrino oscillation parameters theta(13) and Delta m(31)(2) (at Daya Bay and JUNO), theta(12) and Delta m(21)(2) (at JUNO), and most importantly, the neutrino mass hierarchy (at JUNO). We find that, except for the obvious situation where Delta m(41)(2) similar to Delta m(31)(2), sterile states do not affect these measurements substantially.