Statistical significance of the gallium anomaly

Abstract

We calculate the statistical significance of the anomalous deficit of electron neutrinos measured in the radioactive source experiments of the GALLEX and SAGE solar neutrino detectors, taking into account the uncertainty of the detection cross section. We found that the statistical significance of the anomaly is $~$$3.0\ensuremath{\sigma}$. A fit of the data in terms of neutrino oscillations favors at $~$$2.7\ensuremath{\sigma}$ short-baseline electron neutrino disappearance with respect to the null hypothesis of no oscillations.