Data Acquisition and Analysis of the 76Ge Double Beta Experiment in Gran Sasso 1990-2003

Abstract

Data acquisition in a long running underground experiment has its specific experimental challenges, concerning data acquisition, stability of the experiment and background reduction. These problems are addressed here for the HEIDELBERG-MOSCOW experiment, which collected data in the period August 1990 - May 2003. The measurement and the analysis of the data is presented. The duty cycle of the experiment was ~80%, the collected statistics is 71.7 kgy. The background achieved in the energy region of the Q value for double beta decay is 0.11 events/kg y keV. The two-neutrino accompanied half-life is determined on the basis of more than 100 000 events. The confidence level for the neutrinoless signal has been improved to a 4 sigma level.

arXiv commentFull version (50 pages, 36 figures, 9 tables), zipped ps file (size ~21MB or pdf format (size ~26MB), can be found in http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/non_acc/super.html (corrected typos) In press in NIM A, 2004

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• Models of Neutrino Masses and Mixings
• Spin half fermions with mass dimension one: theory, phenomenology, and dark matter
• Implications of neutrino data circa 2005
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• Large neutrino mixing and normal mass hierarchy: a discrete understanding
• LUNA: a Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics
• Pulse shape discrimination studies with a Broad-Energy Germanium detector for signal identification and background suppression in the GERDA double beta decay experiment
• Lepton Flavour Violation and theta(13) in Minimal Resonant Leptogenesis
• A New Limit on the Neutrinoless DBD of 130Te
• Low-scale leptogenesis and soft supersymmetry breaking
• Status and prospects of searches for neutrinoless double beta decay
• Predicting Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay
• What can we learn from neutrinoless double beta decay experiments?
• A New 76Ge Double Beta Decay Experiment at LNGS
• The IGEX experiment revisited: a response to the critique of Klapdor-Kleingrothaus,Dietz, and Krivosheina
• Cosmogenic activation of Germanium and its reduction for low background experiments
• Statistics of neutrinos and the double beta decay
• Possible violation of the spin-statistics relation for neutrinos: cosmological and astrophysical consequences
• Characterization of the first true coaxial 18-fold segmented n-type prototype detector for the GERDA project
• Pulse shape analysis in segmented detectors as a technique for background reduction in Ge double-beta decay experiments
• The Processing of Enriched Germanium for the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR and R&D for a Possible Future Ton-Scale Ge-76 Double-Beta Decay Experiment
• Neutron Inelastic Scattering Processes as Background for Double-Beta Decay Experiments
• Signal modeling of high-purity Ge detectors with a small read-out electrode and application to neutrinoless double beta decay search in Ge-76
• Ge Detectors and $0\nu \beta \beta$: The Search for Double Beta Decay with Germanium Detectors: Past, Present and Future
• Low scale gravity as the source of neutrino masses?
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• Neutrino Mass Operators of Dimension up to Nine in Two-Higgs-doublet Model
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• Signals of sneutrino-antisneutrino mixing in an $e^{-}\gamma$ collider in anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking
• Neutrinos in a left-right model with a horizontal symmetry
• Critical View to "The IGEX neutrinoless double beta decay experiment...." published in Phys. Rev. D, Volume 65 (2002) 092007
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• Double Beta Decay Experiments at Canfranc Underground Laboratory
• Constraints on the Sum of Neutrino Masses from Cosmology and their impact on world neutrino data
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• Operation of a GERDA Phase I prototype detector in liquid argon and nitrogen
• Double Beta Decay
• Matter effects on Majorana neutrino phases