Cosmogenic-neutron activation of TeO2 and implications for neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments

Abstract

Flux-averaged cross sections for cosmogenic-neutron activation of natural tellurium were measured using a neutron beam containing neutrons of kinetic energies up to $\sim$800 MeV, and having an energy spectrum similar to that of cosmic-ray neutrons at sea-level. Analysis of the radioisotopes produced reveals that 110mAg will be a dominant contributor to the cosmogenic-activation background in experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay of 130Te, such as CUORE and SNO+. An estimate of the cosmogenic-activation background in the CUORE experiment has been obtained using the results of this measurement and cross-section measurements of proton activation of tellurium. Additionally, the measured cross sections in this work are also compared with results from semi-empirical cross-section calculations.

11 pages, 5 figures

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• Analysis Techniques for the Evaluation of the Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay Lifetime in ${}^{130}$Te with CUORE-0
• CUORE-0 detector: design, construction and operation
• Low background techniques in bolometers for double-beta decay search
• Cosmogenic production of tritium in dark matter detectors
• Cosmogenic activation of materials
• CUORE Sensitivity to $0\nu \beta \beta$ Decay
• Cosmogenic activation in double beta decay experiments
• Study of cosmogenic activation above ground for the DarkSide-20k experiment
• Muon Track Reconstruction in a Segmented Bolometric Array Using Multi-Objective Optimization