Published June 22, 2022 | Version v1
Miscellaneous Open

From 222Rn measurements in XENONnT and HeXe to radon mitigation in future liquid xenon experiments

Description

While overwhelming evidence has been found for the existence of dark matter in our universe, its true nature remains a mystery. The XENONnT experiment has recently completed its commissioning and is now on the quest to solve this puzzle. This endeavor is threatened by the background caused by the emanation of 222Rn. In this work, a first estimate of the experiment's radon concentration will be given. Furthermore, the capabilities of the distillation-based radon removal system are demonstrated. For future liquid xenon (LXe) based experiments, the 222Rn-induced background needs to be suppressed even further. A novel radon mitigation technique using surface coatings has been investigated. Very promising reduction factors of more than three orders of magnitude have been achieved with electrochemically plated copper layers, applied to radium implanted stainless steel samples. Additionally, the interactions of alpha particles from 222Rn and electrons from 83mKr have been studied in the Heidelberg Xenon (HeXe) time projection chamber (TPC). Field dependent measurements of the electron drift velocity as well as the charge and light yield are presented. For both, an emphasis was put on the regime of low drift fields, to improve the modeling and reconstruction in future LXe detectors.

Availability note (English)

Also available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00031915

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Publishing Information

Imprint Pagination
194 p.
Report number
INIS-DE--4102