Cosmogenic Activation of Germanium Used for Tonne-Scale Rare Event Search Experiments

Abstract

We report a comprehensive study of cosmogenic activation of germanium used for tonne-scale rare event search experiments. The germanium exposure to cosmic rays on the Earth's surface are simulated with and without a shielding container using Geant4 for a given cosmic muon, neutron, and proton energy spectrum. The production rates of various radioactive isotopes are obtained for different sources separately. We find that fast neutron induced interactions dominate the production rate of cosmogenic activation. Geant4-based simulation results are compared with the calculation of ACTIVIA and the available experimental data. A reasonable agreement between Geant4 simulations and several experimental data sets is presented. We predict that cosmogenic activation of germanium can set limits to the sensitivity of the next generation of tonne-scale experiments.

20 pages, 5 figures, and 12 tables

References in corpus (4)

• Double Beta Decay, Majorana Neutrinos, and Neutrino Mass
• \textsc{MaGe} - a {\sc Geant4}-based Monte Carlo Application Framework for Low-background Germanium Experiments
• ACTIVIA: Calculation of Isotope Production Cross-sections and Yields
• Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Experiments

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Cosmogenic activation of materials
• Large-size sub-keV sensitive germanium detectors for the CONUS experiment
• Full background decomposition of the CONUS experiment
• Cosmogenic activation in double beta decay experiments
• Signatures of muonic activation in the Majorana Demonstrator
• Cosmogenic background study for a 100Mo-based bolometric demonstration experiment at China JinPing underground Laboratory
• Study on cosmogenic activation in copper for rare event search experiments