Freiburg 2008 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 86: Niederenergie-Neutrinophysik und Suche nach Dunkler Materie I

T 86.6: Talk

Monday, March 3, 2008, 18:05–18:20, KGII-HS 2004

Material Screening Measurements of XENON100 Detector with GATOR Set-up at LNGS — •Ali Askin for the XENON collaboration — Physik Institut Universitaet Zurich

The main goal of the XENON dark matter search is to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), which are compelling particle dark matter candidates,via their elastic scattering on Xe nuclei. Since dark matter events are expected to be very rare, one of the most important points in these challenging searches is to suppress the limiting background as much as possible. As a proof of principle, the XENON10 detector has been constructed and operated succesfully at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) deep underground facilities. In the second phase of the experiment (XENON100), it is aimed to increase the sensitivity of the experiment by increasing the detector mass and at the same time decreasing of the residual background by the careful selection of the construction materials. In order to study the background emitted from the detector materials, a high purity germanium spectrometer(HPGe), named GATOR, has been installed at LNGS in 2007. Screening of different XENON100 materials and their monte carlo simulations are currently proceeding. Comparison of data obtained from simulations for each different material to the data obtained from GATOR, give us the opportunity to understand the radioactivity of the materials in terms of their 238-U, 232-Th, 40- K, 60-Co and 137-Cs contamination, and thus to predict the background expected for the XENON100 experiment.