Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
1822006 | Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment | 2016 | 15 Pages |
Abstract
The Majorana collaboration is constructing the Majorana Demonstrator at the Sanford Underground Research Facility at the Homestake gold mine, in Lead, SD. The apparatus will use Ge detectors, enriched in isotope 76Ge, to demonstrate the feasibility of a large-scale Ge detector experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay. The long half-life of this postulated process requires that the apparatus be extremely low in radioactive isotopes whose decays may produce backgrounds to the search. The radioassay program conducted by the collaboration to ensure that the materials comprising the apparatus are sufficiently pure is described. The resulting measurements from gamma-ray counting, neutron activation and mass spectroscopy of the radioactive-isotope contamination for the materials studied for use in the detector are reported. We interpret these numbers in the context of the expected background for the experiment.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Physics and Astronomy
Instrumentation
Authors
N. Abgrall, I.J. Arnquist, F.T. III, H.O. Back, A.S. Barabash, F.E. Bertrand, M. Boswell, A.W. Bradley, V. Brudanin, M. Busch, M. Buuck, D. Byram, A.S. Caldwell, Y.-D. Chan, C.D. Christofferson, P.-H. Chu, C. Cuesta, J.A. Detwiler, I. Zhitnikov,