Performance of an ultra-pure NaI(Tl) detector produced by an indigenously-developed purification method and crystal growth for the COSINE-200 experiment

Abstract

The COSINE-100 experiment has been operating with 106 kg of low-background NaI(Tl) detectors to test the results from the DAMA/LIBRA experiment, which claims to have observed dark matter. However, since the background of the NaI(Tl) crystals used in the COSINE-100 experiment is 2-3 times higher than that in the DAMA detectors, no conclusion regarding the claimed observation from the DAMA/LIBRA experiment could be reached. Therefore, we plan to upgrade the current COSINE-100 experiment to the next phase, COSINE-200, by using ultra-low background NaI(Tl) detectors. The basic principle was already proved with the commercially available Astro-grade NaI powder from Sigma-Aldrich company. However, we have developed a mass production process of ultra-pure NaI powder at the Center for Underground Physics (CUP) of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Korea, using the direct purification of the raw NaI powder. We plan to produce more than 1,000 kg of ultra-pure powder for the COSINE200 experiment. With our crystal grower installed at CUP, we have successfully grown a low-background crystal using our purification technique for the NaI powder. We have assembled a low-background NaI(Tl) detector. In this article, we report the performance of this ultra-pure NaI(Tl) crystal detector produced at IBS, Korea.

References in corpus (10)

• A direct empirical proof of the existence of dark matter
• The DAMA/LIBRA apparatus
• An experiment to search for dark matter interactions using sodium iodide detectors
• Tests on NaI(Tl) crystals for WIMP search at the Yangyang Underground Laboratory
• Strong constraints from COSINE-100 on the DAMA dark matter results using the same sodium iodide target
• Three-year annual modulation search with COSINE-100
• Development of ultra-pure NaI(Tl) detectors for the COSINE-200 experiment
• Development of highly radiopure NaI(Tl) scintillator for PICOLON dark matter search project
• Growth of Ultra-high Purity NaI(Tl) Crystal for Dark Matter Searches
• A facility for mass production of ultra-pure NaI powder for the COSINE-200 experiment

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Measurement of the Electron-Neutrino Charged-Current Cross Sections on ${}^{127}$I with the COHERENT NaI$\nu$E detector
• Simulation and background characterisation of the SABRE South experiment
• Search for inelastic WIMP-iodine scattering with COSINE-100
• Scintillation characteristics of an undoped CsI crystal at low-temperature for dark matter search
• Validation of the COSINE-100U NaI(Tl) Encapsulation for Low-Temperature Operation in Liquid Scintillator