Chromatographic separation of radioactive noble gases from xenon

Abstract

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment operates at the Sanford Underground Research Facility to detect nuclear recoils from the hypothetical Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) on a liquid xenon target. Liquid xenon typically contains trace amounts of the noble radioactive isotopes ${}^{85}$Kr and ${}^{39}$Ar that are not removed by the in situ gas purification system. The decays of these isotopes at concentrations typical of research-grade xenon would be a dominant background for a WIMP search exmperiment. To remove these impurities from the liquid xenon, a chromatographic separation system based on adsorption on activated charcoal was built. 400 kg of xenon was processed, reducing the average concentration of krypton from 130 ppb to 3.5 ppt as measured by a cold-trap assisted mass spectroscopy system. A 50 kg batch spiked to 0.001 g/g of krypton was processed twice and reduced to an upper limit of 0.2 ppt.

arXiv commentAccepted in Astropart. Phys

References in corpus (13)

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• Dark Matter Results from First 98.7-day Data of PandaX-II Experiment
• The XENON100 Dark Matter Experiment
• XMASS detector
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• LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Conceptual Design Report
• Radiogenic and Muon-Induced Backgrounds in the LUX Dark Matter Detector
• Distillation of Liquid Xenon to Remove Krypton
• A New Method of Measuring 81Kr and 85Kr Abundances in Environmental Samples
• An Ultra-Low Background PMT for Liquid Xenon Detectors
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• A simple high-sensitivity technique for purity analysis of xenon gas

Cited by in corpus (15)

• First Dark Matter Search Results from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment
• Projected WIMP sensitivity of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter experiment
• A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics
• Radiogenic and Muon-Induced Backgrounds in the LUX Dark Matter Detector
• Removing krypton from xenon by cryogenic distillation to the ppq level
• Calibration, event reconstruction, data analysis and limits calculation for the LUX dark matter experiment
• Improved calculations of beta decay backgrounds to new physics in liquid xenon detectors
• Direct Detection of Dark Matter -- APPEC Committee Report
• Measurement of the radon concentration in purified water in the Super-Kamiokande IV detector
• Design and Commissioning of the PandaX-4T Cryogenic Distillation System for Krypton and Radon Removal
• Projected sensitivity of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment to the two-neutrino and neutrinoless double beta decays of ${}^{134}$Xe
• Cosmogenic production of ${}^{37}$Ar in the context of the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment
• Demonstration of radon removal from SF${}_6$ using molecular sieves
• Search for two neutrino double electron capture of ${}^{124}$Xe and ${}^{126}$Xe in the full exposure of the LUX detector
• Design Challenges for a Future Liquid Xenon Observatory