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Mitigation of backgrounds from cosmogenic Xe-137 in xenon gas experiments using He-3 neutron capture
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- [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.
Details
- Database :
- OAIster
- Notes :
- TEXT, English
- Publication Type :
- Electronic Resource
- Accession number :
- edsoai.on1273092761
- Document Type :
- Electronic Resource