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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 41: Astroparticle Physics II

HK 41.4: Talk

Wednesday, March 16, 2016, 17:45–18:00, S1/01 A02

Performance of the LAr scintillation veto of Gerda Phase II — •Mark Heisel for the GERDA collaboration — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg

Gerda is an experiment to search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of ⁷⁶Ge. Results of Phase I have been published in summer 2013 and Gerda has been upgraded to Phase II. To reach the aspired background index of ∼10⁻³ cts/(keV·kg·yr) for Phase II active background-suppression techniques are applied, including an active liquid argon (LAr) veto. It has been demonstrated with the LArGe test facility that the detection of argon scintillation light can be used to effectively suppress background events in the germanium detectors, which simultaneously deposit energy in the LAr. The light instrumentation consisting of photomuliplier tubes (PMT) and wavelength-shifting fibers connected to silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) has been installed in Gerda. In this talk the low-background design of the LAr veto and its performance during the Phase II start-up will be reported.