München 2019 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 29: Astroparticle Physics II

HK 29.6: Talk

Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 18:00–18:15, HS 18

Studying the impact of radon daughter removal techniques on xenon purity — Stefan Brünner, •Dominick Cichon, Guillaume Eurin, Florian Jörg, Teresa Marrodán Undagoitia, Natascha Rupp, and Hardy Simgen — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany

Liquid xenon (LXe) detectors play a key role in the search for new physics such as dark matter and the neutrinoless double-beta decay. For instance, XENON1T has been operating over the last years searching for dark matter interactions in its LXe time projection chamber (TPC). Although no direct evidence for particle dark matter has been found yet, the experiment set the, at the time of writing, strictest exclusion limits on the cross-section for interactions between dark matter particles and ordinary matter.

In order to increase the sensitivity of LXe detectors even further, as required by future experiments such as DARWIN, extensive R&D regarding background mitigation is needed. This is especially true when it comes to daughter nuclides of radon, which make up a major background contribution to new physics searches. This talk gives an overview about current activities linked to background reduction in LXe TPCs. The focus lies on investigating the impact of chemicals used to remove radon daughters from PTFE, a material commonly employed in LXe detectors, on the purity of xenon. For this purpose, an LXe TPC allowing for the rapid exchange of PTFE components has been built and commissioned. Results related to the detector performance as well as the subject of study are presented and discussed.