Mitigation of backgrounds from cosmogenic Xe-137 in xenon gas experiments using He-3 neutron capture

[EN] Xe-136 is used as the target medium for many experiments searching for 0 nu beta beta. Despite underground operation, cosmic muons that reach the laboratory can produce spallation neutrons causing activation of detector materials. A potential background that is difficult to veto using muon tagg...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Rogers, L., Jones, B. J. P., Laing, A., Pingulkar, S., Smithers, B., Woodruff, K., Adams, C., Arazi, L., Arnquist, I. J., Azevedo, C. D. R., Bailey, K., Benlloch-Rodríguez, J. M., Borges, F. I. G. M., Rodriguez-Samaniego, Javier, Álvarez-Puerta, Vicente|||0000-0001-6938-8259, Ballester Merelo, Francisco José|||0000-0002-2464-5116, Esteve Bosch, Raul|||0000-0002-1289-6938, Herrero Bosch, Vicente|||0000-0003-0860-2789, Mora Mas, Francisco José|||0000-0003-2281-9546, Toledo Alarcón, José Francisco|||0000-0002-9782-4510
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/172297
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/172297
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Gaseous detectors
Scintillators
Scintillation and light emission processes
Solid
Gas and liquid scintillators
TECNOLOGIA ELECTRONICA
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] Xe-136 is used as the target medium for many experiments searching for 0 nu beta beta. Despite underground operation, cosmic muons that reach the laboratory can produce spallation neutrons causing activation of detector materials. A potential background that is difficult to veto using muon tagging comes in the form of Xe-137 created by the capture of neutrons on Xe-136. This isotope decays via beta decay with a half-life of 3.8 min and a Q(beta) of similar to 4.16 MeV. This work proposes and explores the concept of adding a small percentage of He-3 to xenon as a means to capture thermal neutrons and reduce the number of activations in the detector volume. When using this technique we find the contamination from Xe-137 activation can be reduced to negligible levels in tonne and multi-tonne scale high pressure gas xenon neutrinoless double beta decay experiments running at any depth in an underground laboratory.

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