Radon background in liquid xenon detectors

Abstract

The radioactive daughters isotope of 222Rn are one of the highest risk contaminants in liquid xenon detectors aiming for a small signal rate. The noble gas is permanently emanated from the detector surfaces and mixed with the xenon target. Because of its long half-life 222Rn is homogeneously distributed in the target and its subsequent decays can mimic signal events. Since no shielding is possible this background source can be the dominant one in future large scale experiments. This article provides an overview of strategies used to mitigate this source of background by means of material selection and on-line radon removal techniques.

References in corpus (8)

• First Dark Matter Search Results from the XENON1T Experiment
• Removing krypton from xenon by cryogenic distillation to the ppq level
• Measurements of the ion fraction and mobility of alpha and beta decay products in liquid xenon using EXO-200
• Online ${}^{222}$Rn removal by cryogenic distillation in the XENON100 experiment
• Investigation of radioactivity-induced backgrounds in EXO-200
• Radon depletion in xenon boil-off gas
• Radon and material radiopurity assessment for the NEXT double beta decay experiment
• Krypton and radon background in the PandaX-I dark matter experiment