Low Radioactivity Techniques (LRT2022)

42Ar background in nEXO

Jun 17, 2022, 4:05 PM

15m

EEP 252 (South Dakota Mines)

Oral Presentation Experiment Backgrounds, Models, Simulations LRT 2022 - presentations

Speaker

Venkatesh Veeraraghavan (University of Alabama/Iowa State University)

Description

The next-generation Enriched Xenon Observatory (nEXO) is a planned experiment utilizing 5 tonnes of isotopically-enriched liquid xenon (LXe) and a time projection chamber (TPC) to search for neutrinoless double beta decay of ${}^{136}$Xe. The large, monolithic design of the nEXO TPC provides excellent shielding from the dominant background source - $\gamma$ rays that originate from external materials. With an exceptionally clean central region of the TPC, we need to consider and quantify backgrounds that have previously been considered to be small relative to backgrounds from aforementioned $\gamma$ rays or not considered at all. A case in the latter category is ${}^{42}$Ar contamination in LXe. I will present the quantitative study of this ${}^{42}$Ar background for nEXO.

Presentation materials

42Ar_nEXO_LRT22.pdf

Peer reviewing

Paper

Accepted on Dec 10, 2022 by Jaret Heise

LRT2022_Proceedings_nEXO_Ar42_v15.pdf