Dresden 2013 – scientific programme
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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 66: Astroteilchenphysik
HK 66.2: Talk
Thursday, March 7, 2013, 14:30–14:45, HSZ-401
Proton activation of a natural neodymium target for the SNO+ experiment — •Johannes Petzoldt1, Valentina Lozza1, Ondrej Lebeda2, Jan Stursa2, and Kai Zuber1 — 1Technical University of Dresden, 01069 Dresden, Germany — 2Nuclear Physics Institute of the ASCR, 25068 Husinec-Rez, Czech Republic
In experiments searching for rare events, like the neutrinoless double beta decay, background knowledge and reduction is essential. For SNO+, the follow up of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory experiment, the investigated transition is 150Nd → 150Sm with an estimated half-life for the 0ν-channel of T1/2 ≈ 1025 years. SNO+ is a liquid scintillator based detector with a total mass of 780 tons. In order to study the mentioned transition, the detector will be loaded with 0.3 % natural neodymium. Even with the desired amount of 131 kg of 150Nd in SNO+, only few decays are expected. Their observation and the measured half-life would not only give an answer on the effective neutrino mass, but also to other important questions in modern neutrino physics.
Long-living radioisotopes, induced by cosmogenic activation on natural Nd, contribute to the background in SNO+ and are investigated at TU Dresden. Proton activation measurements for determining the excitation functions for different isotopes in the energy range of 10 to 30 MeV were done in 2010/2011 while in 2012 the lower and higher energies were investigated. The procedure and the latest results are presented.
This work was funded by the German Research Foundation DFG.