Speaker
Description
Over the past few decades, the scale and mass of rare event search experiments have increased by several orders of magnitude. To maintain background-free large fiducial-volume searches, the radio-purity requirements of the materials from which these devices are constructed have improved by similar factors.
High-purity germanium spectroscopy has long-been the workhorse of material screening and selection, providing information on trace radioactive gamma-ray emitting impurities in the bulk of materials. The next generation of direct dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments demand the development of additional assay techniques to provide a more complete understanding of the full uranium (U) and thorium (Th) decay chains, including knowledge of alpha-emitting surface depositions.
In this talk I will highlight the challenging radiopurity requirements for the next generation of rare event search experiments, as well as the extensive UK-based material assay infrastructure in place to address these demands. Where requirements exceed current capability, additional R&D is needed. I will summarise where this R&D is already underway across the UK.
