Mitigation of Backgrounds from Cosmogenic $^{137}$Xe in Xenon Gas Experiments using $^{3}$He Neutron Capture

Autor: Rogers, L., Jones, B. J. P., Laing, A., Pingulkar, S., Woodruff, K., Adams, C., Álvarez, V., Arazi, L., Arnquist, I. J., Azevedo, C. D. R, Bailey, K., Ballester, F., Benlloch-Rodríguez, J. M., Borges, F. I. G. M., Byrnes, N., Cárcel, S., Carrión, J. V., Cebrián, S., Church, E., Conde, C. A. N., Contreras, T., Díaz, G., Díaz, J., Diesburg, M., Dingler, R., Escada, J., Esteve, R., Felkai, R., Fernandes, A. F. M., Fernandes, L. M. P., Ferrario, P., Ferreira, A. L., Freitas, E. D. C., Generowicz, J., Ghosh, S., Goldschmidt, A., Gómez-Cadenas, J. J., González-Díaz, D., Guenette, R., Gutiérrez, R. M., Haefner, J., Hafidi, K., Hauptman, J., Henriques, C. A. O., Morata, J. A. Hernando, Herrero, P., Herrero, V., Ifergan, Y., Johnston, S., Kekic, M., Labarga, L., Lebrun, P., López-March, N., Losada, M., Mano, R. D. P., Martín-Albo, J., Martínez, A., Martínez-Lema, G., McDonald, A. D., Monrabal, F., Monteiro, C. M. B., Mora, F. J., Vidal, J. Muñoz, Novella, P., Nygren, D. R., Palmeiro, B., Para, A., Pérez, J., Querol, M., Redwine, A. B., Renner, J., Repond, J., Riordan, S., Ripoll, L., García, Y. Rodríguez, Rodríguez, J., Romeo, B., Romo-Luque, C., Santos, F. P., Santos, J. M. F. dos, Simón, A., Sofka, C., Sorel, M., Stiegler, T., Toledo, J. F., Torrent, J., Usón, A., Veloso, J. F. C. A., Webb, R., Weiss-Babai, R., White, J. T., Yahlali, N.
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6471/ab8915
Popis: \Xe{136} is used as the target medium for many experiments searching for \bbnonu. 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 minutes and a \Qb\ of $\sim$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.
Databáze: arXiv