Conveners
Noble Element Based Detectors
- Andreas Piepke (University of Alabama)
Noble Element Based Detectors
- Jeter Hall (SNOLAB)
It has been demonstrated that xenon---as a gas, liquid, and solid, and dissolved in liquid scintillator---has the potential to constitute very low radioactive background particle detectors. I will review the past success of such detectors in the the search for rare events, ongoing searches, and where these technologies may take us in the future.
Liquid argon, a key player in our quest to unravel the physics beyond the standard model, is indeed one of the most sensitive targets for GeV-scale dark matter candidates, such as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), as demonstrated by the DEAP-3600 experiment and DarkSide-50 experiment. The unique R&D has led to the design of the next experiment within the Global Argon Dark Matter...
Low-background experiments are obtaining very important results about the most anticipated open problems of our universe, such as direct dark matter searches, neutrinoless double-beta decay, nucleon decay searches, neutrino astrophysics.
All these experiments have been made possible by the selection of radiopure materials to build such experimental facilities, often resulting in a challenging...
DarkSide-20k is under construction at LNGS and is designed to lead the search for heavy WIMPs in the coming years. Argon has the advantage of pulse shape discrimination compared to other noble elements, but has the drawback of the cosmogenically induced Ar-39 content with an activity of 0.96 Bq/kg. Getting rid of this background is pivotal for the success of our scientific program. Hence, the...
The $^{85}$Kr radioactive isotope is found in significant quantities in the atmosphere largely as a result of nuclear industry. Its $\beta$-decay with a half-life of 10.8 years and a Q-value of 687 keV is a dangerous background source for low-threshold noble liquid detectors, which distill their detector medium from air. The GERDA experiment was operating high-purity germanium detectors...
The Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless ββ Decay (LEGEND) aims to detect neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) of Ge-76 using high-purity germanium detectors (HPGe) immersed in liquid argon (LAr). The LAr serves both as a coolant and as an active shield against background radiation. In LEGEND-200, HPGe detectors are operated in atmospheric LAr, which contains the...
The LEGEND experiment searches for neutrinoless double beta decay ($0\nu \beta \beta$) of $^{76}$Ge using high-purity germanium detectors (HPGe). In LEGEND-200, these detectors are operated in atmospheric liquid argon (LAr), which provides active shielding against background radiation and acts as a coolant. However, atmospheric LAr contains the cosmogenically activated isotope $^{42}$Ar, whose...
The XENONnT experiment, primarily designed for WIMP dark matter searches, features unprecedented levels of radiopurity, allowing for precision nuclear physics studies. Among these studies, measuring the branching ratios of beta decay in lead isotopes $^{212}$Pb and $^{214}$Pb with XENONnT introduces a novel approach in this research field. By employing signal and background model fits, it is...
