Radiopurity assessment of the tracking readout for the NEXT double beta decay experiment

Abstract

The Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon Time-Projection Chamber (NEXT) is intended to investigate the neutrinoless double beta decay of 136Xe, which requires a severe suppression of potential backgrounds; therefore, an extensive screening and selection process is underway to control the radiopurity levels of the materials to be used in the experimental set-up of NEXT. The detector design combines the measurement of the topological signature of the event for background discrimination with the energy resolution optimization. Separate energy and tracking readout planes are based on different sensors: photomultiplier tubes for calorimetry and silicon multi-pixel photon counters for tracking. The design of a radiopure tracking plane, in direct contact with the gas detector medium, was specially challenging since the needed components like printed circuit boards, connectors, sensors or capacitors have typically, according to available information in databases and in the literature, activities too large for experiments requiring ultra-low background conditions. Here, the radiopurity assessment of tracking readout components based on gamma-ray spectroscopy using ultra-low background germanium detectors at the Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc (Spain) is described. According to the obtained results, radiopure enough printed circuit boards made of kapton and copper, silicon photomultipliers and other required components, fulfilling the requirement of an overall background level in the region of interest of at most 8 10-4 counts keV-1 kg-1 y-1, have been identified.

References in corpus (24)

• Double Beta Decay, Majorana Neutrinos, and Neutrino Mass
• Measurements of extremely low radioactivity levels in BOREXINO
• Systematic study of trace radioactive impurities in candidate construction materials for EXO-200
• The Majorana Demonstrator Radioassay Program
• Material screening and selection for XENON100
• Lowering the radioactivity of the photomultiplier tubes for the XENON1T dark matter experiment
• Recent Progress in Double Beta Decay
• Radiopurity of Micromegas readout planes
• Background rejection in NEXT using deep neural networks
• Gator: a low-background counting facility at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory
• Initial results of NEXT-DEMO, a large-scale prototype of the NEXT-100 experiment
• Sense and sensitivity of double beta decay experiments
• An Ultra-Low Background PMT for Liquid Xenon Detectors
• Radiopurity control in the NEXT-100 double beta decay experiment: procedures and initial measurements
• Accurate gamma and MeV-electron track reconstruction with an ultra-low diffusion Xenon/TMA TPC at 10 atmospheres
• Ionization and scintillation response of high-pressure xenon gas to alpha particles
• Operation and first results of the NEXT-DEMO prototype using a silicon photomultiplier tracking array
• A Database for Storing the Results of Material Radiopurity Measurements
• Characterization of a medium size Xe/TMA TPC instrumented with microbulk Micromegas, using low-energy $\gamma$-rays
• Characterisation of NEXT-DEMO using xenon K${}_{\alpha }$ X-rays
• Material Screening with HPGe Counting Station for PandaX Experiment
• Ionization and scintillation of nuclear recoils in gaseous xenon
• Description and commissioning of NEXT-MM prototype: first results from operation in a Xenon-Trimethylamine gas mixture
• Backgrounds and sensitivity of the NEXT double beta decay experiment

Cited by in corpus (19)

• The ArDM Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory: a ton-scale detector for Dark Matter Searches
• TREX-DM: a low-background Micromegas-based TPC for low-mass WIMP detection
• Gaseous time projection chambers for rare event detection: Results from the T-REX project. I. Double beta decay
• Background assessment for the TREX Dark Matter experiment
• Radiogenic backgrounds in the NEXT double beta decay experiment
• Radiopurity assessment of the energy readout for the NEXT double beta decay experiment
• Ultra-low radioactivity Kapton and copper-Kapton laminates
• Enhanced low-energy supernova burst detection in large liquid argon time projection chambers enabled by Q-Pix
• Status and prospects of the NEXT experiment for neutrinoless double beta decay searches
• Status of ArDM-1t: First observations from operation with a full ton-scale liquid argon target
• Performance of a SensL-30035-16P Silicon Photomultiplier array at liquid argon temperature
• Measurement of radon-induced backgrounds in the NEXT double beta decay experiment
• Double Beta Decay Experiments at Canfranc Underground Laboratory
• The electronics of the energy plane of the NEXT-White detector
• Mass spectrometric analyses of high performance polymers to assess radiopurity as ultra low background materials for rare event physics detectors
• Barium Chemosensors with Dry-Phase Fluorescence for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay
• AlphaCAMM, a Micromegas-based camera for high-sensitivity screening of alpha surface contamination
• Treatment of material radioassay measurements in projecting sensitivity for low-background experiments
• High Pressure Gas Xenon TPCs for Double Beta Decay Searches