Mitigation of ${}^{42}$Ar/${}^{42}$K background for the GERDA Phase II experiment

Abstract

Background coming from the ${}^{42}$Ar decay chain is considered to be one of the most relevant for the GERDA experiment, which aims to search of the neutrinoless double beta decay of ${}^{76}$Ge. The sensitivity strongly relies on the absence of background around the Q-value of the decay. Background coming from ${}^{42}$K, a progeny of ${}^{42}$Ar, can contribute to that background via electrons from the continuous spectrum with an endpoint of 3.5 MeV. Research and development on the suppression methods targeting this source of background were performed at the low-background test facility LArGe. It was demonstrated that by reducing ${}^{42}$K ion collection on the surfaces of the broad energy germanium detectors in combination with pulse shape discrimination techniques and an argon scintillation veto, it is possible to suppress the ${}^{42}$K background by three orders of magnitude. This is sufficient for Phase II of the GERDA experiment.

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• Background free search for neutrinoless double beta decay with GERDA Phase II
• The GERDA experiment for the search of 0νββ decay in ^{76}Ge
• \textsc{MaGe} - a {\sc Geant4}-based Monte Carlo Application Framework for Low-background Germanium Experiments
• The Nylon Scintillator Containment Vessels for the Borexino Solar Neutrino Experiment

Cited by in corpus (18)

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• Final Results of GERDA on the Two-Neutrino Double-$\beta$ Decay Half-Life of ${}^{76}$Ge
• Modeling of GERDA Phase II data
• Large Low Background kTon-Scale Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers
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• Virtual depth by active background suppression: Revisiting the cosmic muon induced background of GERDA Phase II
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• Study of cosmogenic activation above ground for the DarkSide-20k experiment
• Some considerations about cosmogenic production of radioactive isotopes in Ar as target for the next neutrino experiments
• Study of cosmogenic activation above ground of Ar for DarkSide-20k
• Mitigation Strategies for ${}^{42}$Ar/${}^{42}$K Background Reduction using Encapsulation with Ultra-Pure Plastic for the LEGEND Experiment