Cosmogenic activation of a natural tellurium target

Abstract

130Te is one of the candidates for the search for neutrinoless double beta decay. It is currently planned to be used in two experiments: CUORE and SNO+. In the CUORE experiment TeO2 crystals cooled at cryogenic temperatures will be used. In the SNO+ experiment natTe will be deployed up to 0.3% loading in the liquid scintillator volume. A possible background for the signal searched for, are the high Q-value, long-lived isotopes, produced by cosmogenic neutron and proton spallation reaction on the target material. A total of 18 isotopes with Q-value larger than 2 MeV and T1/2 >20 days have been identified as potential backgrounds. In addition low Q-value, high rate isotopes can be problematic due to pile-up effects, specially in liquid scintillator based detectors. Production rates have been calculated using the ACTIVIA program, the TENDL library, and the cosmogenic neutron and proton flux parametrization at sea level from Armstrong and Gehrels for both long and short lived isotopes. The obtained values for the cross sections are compared with the existing experimental data and calculations. Good agreement has been generally found. The results have been applied to the SNO+ experiment for one year of exposure at sea level. Two possible cases have been considered: a two years of cooling down period deep underground, or a first purification on surface and 6 months of cooling down deep underground. Deep underground activation at the SNOLAB location has been considered.

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• Evidence for oscillation of atmospheric neutrinos
• Muon-Induced Background Study for Underground Laboratories
• Neutrinoless double beta decay and neutrino physics
• Measurement of the double-βdecay half-life of ^{136}Xe with the KamLAND-Zen experiment
• Production of high purity TeO2 single crystals for the study of neutrinoless double beta decay
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• Excitation functions of proton-induced reactions on natural Nd in the 10-30 MeV energy range, and production of radionuclides relevant for double-β decay

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Current Status and Future Prospects of the SNO+ Experiment
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• The SNO+ Experiment
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• Physics potential of searching for $0\nu \beta \beta$ decays in JUNO
• Cosmogenic production of tritium in dark matter detectors
• Cosmogenic activation of materials
• Cosmogenic-neutron activation of TeO2 and implications for neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments
• Multi-site Event Discrimination in Large Liquid Scintillation Detectors
• Cosmogenic activation in double beta decay experiments
• Study of cosmogenic activation above ground for the DarkSide-20k experiment