Dortmund 2021 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 45: Searches for Dark Matter I

T 45.7: Vortrag

Dienstag, 16. März 2021, 17:30–17:45, Tt

Update on the XENONnT Gd-loaded water Cherenkov neutron veto — •Daniel Wenz for the XENON collaboration — Institut für Physik & Exzellenzcluster PRISMA, J. Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany

For several years, the XENON1T experiment has been the most sensitive Dark Matter experiment for WIMP-nucleon coupling at masses above 6 GeV/c2. Following this success, an upgraded experiment XENONnT with a larger and more sensitive liquid xenon time projection chamber has been constructed and is currently being commissioned at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. The new experiment aims at a sensitivity improvement of more than one order of magnitude. To achieve this ambitious goal, the intrinsic neutron background of the detector must be reduced as well. Neutrons are capable of mimicking a WIMP signal by undergoing single-scatter nuclear recoils, escaping the sensitive volume without interacting a second time. To suppress this background, XENONnT will be equipped with a neutron veto system based on the novel principle of a gadolinium-loaded water Cherenkov detector, as has been developed for the Sk-Gd upgrade of the Super-Kamiokande experiment. The predicted neutron tagging efficiency for the XENONnT system reaches 84%, sufficient to render the remaining neutron background insignificant. In this talk we present an overview of the neutron veto system as well as its commissioning status.