Experimental study of 13C(α,n)16O reactions in the Majorana Demonstrator calibration data
| Autor: | MAJORANA Collaboration, Arnquist, I. J., Avignone, F. T., Barabash, A. S., Barton, C. J., Bhimani, K. H., Blalock, E., Bos, B., Busch, M., Buuck, M., Caldwell, T. S., Chan, Y-D., Christofferson, C. D., Chu, P. -H., Clark, M. L., Cuesta, C., Detwiler, J. A., Efremenko, Yu., Ejiri, H., Elliott, S. R., Giovanetti, G. K., Green, M. P., Gruszko, J., Guinn, I. S., Guiseppe, V. E., Haufe, C. R., Henning, R., Aguilar, D. Hervas, Hoppe, E. W., Hostiuc, A., Kidd, M. F., Kim, I., Kouzes, R. T., Lannen, T. E., Li, A., Lopez, A. M., Lopez-Castano, J. M., Martin, E. L., Martin, R. D., Massarczyk, R., Meijer, S. J., Oli, T. K., Othman, G., Paudel, L. S., Pettus, W., Poon, A. W. P., Radford, D. C., Reine, A. L., Rielage, K., Ruof, N. W., Tedeschi, D., Varner, R. L., Vasilyev, S., Wilkerson, J. F., Wiseman, C., Xu, W., Yu, C. -H., Zhu, B. X. |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2022 |
| Předmět: | |
| DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2203.14228 |
| Popis: | Neutron captures and delayed decays of reaction products are common sources of backgrounds in ultra-rare event searches. In this work, we studied $^{13}$C($α,n)^{16}$O reactions induced by $α$-particles emitted within the calibration sources of the \textsc{Majorana Demonstrator}. These sources are thorium-based calibration standards enclosed in carbon-rich materials. The reaction rate was estimated by using the 6129-keV $γ$-rays emitted from the excited $^{16}$O states that are populated when the incoming $α$-particles exceed the reaction Q-value. Thanks to the excellent energy performance of the \textsc{Demonstrator}'s germanium detectors, these characteristic photons can be clearly observed in the calibration data. Facilitated by \textsc{Geant4} simulations, a comparison between the observed 6129-keV photon rates and predictions by a TALYS-based software was performed. The measurements and predictions were found to be consistent, albeit with large statistical uncertainties. This agreement provides support for background projections from ($α,n$)-reactions in future double-beta decay search efforts. Published version |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|