Development of an alpha-particle imaging detector based on a low radioactivity micro-time-projection chamber

Abstract

An important issue for rare-event-search experiments, such as the search for dark matter or neutrinoless double beta decay, is to reduce radioactivity of the detector materials and the experimental environment. The selection of materials with low radioactive impurities, such as isotopes of the uranium and thorium chains, requires a precise measurement of surface and bulk radioactivity. Focused on the first one, an alpha-particle detector has been developed based on a gaseous micro-time-projection chamber. A low-alpha mu-PIC with reduced alpha-emission background was installed in the detector. The detector offers the advantage of position sensitivity, which allows the alpha-particle contamination of the sample to be imaged and the background to be measured at the same time. The detector performance was measured by using an alpha-particle source. The measurement with a sample was also demonstrated and the sensitivity is discussed.

arXiv commentAccept 25 Oct 2019, Nucl. Instr. Meth. A

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Development of highly radiopure NaI(Tl) scintillator for PICOLON dark matter search project
• Disentangling the sources of ionizing radiation in superconducting qubits
• Evaluation of radon adsorption efficiency values in xenon with activated carbon fibers
• Screener3D: a Gaseous Time Projection Chamber for Ultra-low Radioactive Material Screening