Frankfurt 2014 – scientific programme
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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 51: Instrumentierung
HK 51.8: Talk
Thursday, March 20, 2014, 18:30–18:45, HZ 9
Comissioning of a 1-m distillation plant to remove krypton out of xenon — •Stephan Rosendahl1, Ethan Brown1, Ion Cristescu2, Alexander Fieguth1, Christian Huhmann1, Michael Murra1, and Christian Weinheimer1 — 1Institut für Kernphysik, Wilhelm-Klemm Strasse 9, 48149 Münster, Germany — 2Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Tritium Laboratory, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany
The XENON1T experiment aims for the direct detection of dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS) and is now under construction. For this purpose a dual-phase TPC, filled with xenon is used, aiming for a fiducial volume of 1 ton to increase the sensitivity to WIMP-nucleon cross section by 1.5 orders of magnitude compared to current experiments. One dominant radioactive contamination, which one needs to reduce to reach the sensitivity, is 85Kr, which has a beta-becay with an endpoint energy of 687keV. Therefore, the xenon has to be purified to a concentration of <0.1ppt (parts per trillion) natural krypton in xenon. This talk reports about the commissioning of a cryogenic distillation plant to remove krypton out of xenon, using 1m of package material, as a milestone on the way to a distillation column using 3m package material. Different diagnostics tools, like a 83mKr tracer method and cold trap-enhanced mass spectrometry, allow to characterize the efficiency of the system.
Different aspects of the project have been funded by DFG-Großgeräte, BMBF and Helmholtz-Alliance for Astroparticle Physics HAP.