Mitigation of Backgrounds from Cosmogenic ${}^{137}$Xe in Xenon Gas Experiments using ${}^3$He Neutron Capture

Abstract

\Xe{136} is used as the target medium for many experiments searching for \bbnonu. Despite underground operation, cosmic muons that reach the laboratory can produce spallation neutrons causing activation of detector materials. A potential background that is difficult to veto using muon tagging comes in the form of \Xe{137} created by the capture of neutrons on \Xe{136}. This isotope decays via beta decay with a half-life of 3.8 minutes and a \Qb\ of $\sim$4.16 MeV. This work proposes and explores the concept of adding a small percentage of \He{3} to xenon as a means to capture thermal neutrons and reduce the number of activations in the detector volume. When using this technique we find the contamination from \Xe{137} activation can be reduced to negligible levels in tonne and multi-tonne scale high pressure gas xenon neutrinoless double beta decay experiments running at any depth in an underground laboratory.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics
• Measurement of the ${}^{136}$Xe two-neutrino double beta decay half-life via direct background subtraction in NEXT
• Kiloton-scale xenon detectors for neutrinoless double beta decay and other new physics searches
• Dielectric Strength of Noble and Quenched Gases for High Pressure Time Projection Chambers
• Cosmogenic activation in double beta decay experiments