1. Cosmogenic-neutron activation of TeO2 and implications for neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments
- Author
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Wang, Barbara S., Norman, Eric B., Scielzo, Nicholas D., Smith, Alan R., Thomas, Keenan J., and Wender, Stephen A.
- Subjects
Nuclear Experiment ,Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors - Abstract
Flux-averaged cross sections for cosmogenic-neutron activation of natural tellurium were measured using a neutron beam containing neutrons of kinetic energies up to $\sim$800 MeV, and having an energy spectrum similar to that of cosmic-ray neutrons at sea-level. Analysis of the radioisotopes produced reveals that 110mAg will be a dominant contributor to the cosmogenic-activation background in experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay of 130Te, such as CUORE and SNO+. An estimate of the cosmogenic-activation background in the CUORE experiment has been obtained using the results of this measurement and cross-section measurements of proton activation of tellurium. Additionally, the measured cross sections in this work are also compared with results from semi-empirical cross-section calculations., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures
- Published
- 2015
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