A high precision calorimeter for hunting the sterile neutrino in the SOX experiment

Abstract A thermal calorimetric apparatus was designed, built and calibrated for measuring the activity of the artificial 144 Ce —144 Pr antineutrino source. This measurement will be performed at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, just before the source insertion in the tunnel under the Borexino detector and a precision better than 1% is required for a disappearance technique measurement in the SOX (Short distance neutrino Oscillation with BoreXino) project. In this work the apparatus is described and the most important results from the calibration measurements are shown, where the final precision of few per thousand is demonstrated.