A novel ${}^{83\mathrm{m}}$Kr tracer method for characterizing xenon gas and cryogenic distillation systems

Abstract

The radioactive isomer ${}^{83\mathrm{m}}$Kr has many properties that make it very useful for various applications. Its low energy decay products, like conversion, shake-off and Auger electrons as well as X- and $\gamma$-rays are used for calibration purposes in neutrino mass experiments and direct dark matter detection experiments. Thanks to the short half-life of 1.83 h and the decay to the ground state ${}^{83}$Kr, one does not risk contamination of any low-background experiment with long- lived radionuclides. In this paper, we present two new applications of ${}^{83\mathrm{m}}$Kr. It can be used as a radioactive tracer in noble gases to characterize the particle flow inside of gas routing systems. A method of doping ${}^{83\mathrm{m}}$Kr into xenon gas and its detection, using special custom-made detectors, based on a photomultiplier tube, is described. This technique has been used to determine the circulation speed of gas particles inside of a gas purification system for xenon. Furthermore, 83m Kr can be used to rapidly estimate separation performance of a distillation system.

References in corpus (14)

• First results from the LUX dark matter experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility
• Dark Matter Results from 225 Live Days of XENON100 Data
• The ALICE TPC, a large 3-dimensional tracking device with fast readout for ultra-high multiplicity events
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• Reflectance of Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) for Xenon Scintillation Light
• Measurement of the Scintillation Yield of Low-Energy Electrons in Liquid Xenon
• Ultra-stable implanted 83Rb/83mKr electron sources for the energy scale monitoring in the KATRIN experiment
• An atom trap trace analysis system for measuring krypton contamination in xenon dark matter detectors
• A 83Krm Source for Use in Low-background Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chambers
• Limits on the release of Rb isotopes from a zeolite based 83mKr calibration source for the XENON project

Cited by in corpus (4)

• DARWIN: towards the ultimate dark matter detector
• The XENON1T Dark Matter Experiment
• ${}^{83\text{m}}$Kr calibration of the 2013 LUX dark matter search
• High-resolution spectroscopy of gaseous ${}^{83m}$Kr conversion electrons with the KATRIN experiment