Dresden 2013 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 22: Instrumentation
HK 22.1: Group Report
Monday, March 4, 2013, 16:45–17:15, HSZ-405
A background veto system for GERDA based on scintillation of liquid argon — •Nuno Barros — Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Gerda is an experiment to search for the neutrinoless double beta decay on 76Ge, where bare germanium detectors are operated in a cryostat with 65 m3 of liquid argon (LAr). A light instrumentation system installed in the LArGe test facility demonstrated that the detection of argon scintillation light can be used to effectively suppress background events in the germanium, that simultaneously deposit energy in LAr. The results from LArGe demonstrated that this method could significantly contribute to reach the goal in background index of 10−3 cts/(keV·kg·yr) for the Phase II of Gerda. Based on these results, several options are being pursued for the light instrumentation of LAr, which have to comply with the stringent radio-purity requirements of the experiment and should provide a significant suppression of the background signals in the region of interest around Qββ of 76Ge at 2039 keV. This talk gives an account of the different design options under investigation by the Gerda collaboration. Results from the LArGe test facility are presented, demonstrating the feasibility of the method. The designs including photomultipliers (PMT) and silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) are discussed, along with their performance expectations from MC simulations. The progress in the development of these options is also reported, along with the design criteria for the use of light instrumentation in Gerda . This work is funded by the DFG, the BMBF and supported by the HPC@ZIH Dresden.