Mainz 2014 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 30: Experimentelle Methoden der Astroteilchenphysik 1

T 30.8: Talk

Monday, March 24, 2014, 18:35–18:50, P7

Testing PMTs for XENON1T — •Meike Danisch on behalf of the XENON collaboration — Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, Germany

XENON1T is the successor experiment of XENON100 and is at the moment under construction at the LNGS underground laboratory in Italy. The XENON experiments aim at directly detecting dark matter via interactions of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with xenon nuclei. The goal of XENON1T is to improve the sensitivity compared to its predecessor experiment by 2 orders of magnitude by using a larger xenon volume and by reducing the background. The XENON1T time projection chamber, containing 2.2t of liquid xenon (LXe), will be equipped with approximately 250 PMTs to detect the scintillation signals induced by a particle interaction in the xenon volume. For this purpose 3'' R11410-21 PMTs with low radioactivity and high quantum efficiency are being manufactured by Hamamatsu. Several properties of these PMTs have to be tested for compatibility with the requirements of the experiment. These include dark count rate, gain and afterpulse probability, which are being measured at our test facility at the MPI for nuclear physics in Heidelberg. We will report on our testing methods, the current status and results of measurements at room- and cryogenic LXe temperatures.