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NEXT Collaboration(Alvarez, V. et al), Carcel, S., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Diaz, J., Ferrario, P., Gil, A., et al. (2013). Initial results of NEXT-DEMO, a large-scale prototype of the NEXT-100 experiment. J. Instrum., 8, P04002–25pp.
Abstract: NEXT-DEMO is a large-scale prototype of the NEXT-100 detector, an electroluminescent time projection chamber that will search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of Xe-136 using 100-150 kg of enriched xenon gas. NEXT-DEMO was built to prove the expected performance of NEXT-100, namely, energy resolution better than 1% FWHM at 2.5MeV and event topological reconstruction. In this paper we describe the prototype and its initial results. A resolution of 1.75% FWHM at 511 keV (which extrapolates to 0.8% FWHM at 2.5 MeV) was obtained at 10 bar pressure using a gamma-ray calibration source. Also, a basic study of the event topology along the longitudinal coordinate is presented, proving that it is possible to identify the distinct dE/dx of electron tracks in high-pressure xenon using an electroluminescence TPC.
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Esteve, R., Toledo, J., Monrabal, F., Lorca, D., Serra, L., Mari, A., et al. (2012). The trigger system in the NEXT-DEMO detector. J. Instrum., 7, C12001–9pp.
Abstract: NEXT-DEMO is a prototype of NEXT (Neutrino Experiment with Xenon TPC), an experiment to search for neutrino-less double beta decay using a 100 kg radio-pure, 90 % enriched (136Xe isotope) high-pressure gaseous xenon TPC with electroluminescence readout. The detector is based on a PMT plane for energy measurements and a SiPM tracking plane for topological event filtering. The experiment will be located in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory in Spain. Front-end electronics, trigger and data-acquisition systems (DAQ) have been built. The DAQ is an implementation of the Scalable Readout System (RD51 collaboration) based on FPGA. Our approach for trigger is to have a distributed and reconfigurable system in the DAQ itself. Moreover, the trigger allows on-line triggering based on the detection of primary or secondary scintillation light, or a combination of both, that arrives to the PMT plane.
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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Cervera-Villanueva, A., Escudero, L., Gomez-Cadenas, J. J., Hansen, C., Monfregola, L., et al. (2012). Measurements of the T2K neutrino beam properties using the INGRID on-axis near detector. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 694, 211–223.
Abstract: Precise measurement of neutrino beam direction and intensity was achieved based on a new concept with modularized neutrino detectors. INGRID (Interactive Neutrino GRID) is an on-axis near detector for the T2K long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. INGRID consists of 16 identical modules arranged in horizontal and vertical arrays around the beam center. The module has a sandwich structure of iron target plates and scintillator trackers. INGRID directly monitors the muon neutrino beam profile center and intensity using the number of observed neutrino events in each module. The neutrino beam direction is measured with accuracy better than 0.4 mrad from the measured profile center. The normalized event rate is measured with 4% precision. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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NEXT Collaboration(Alvarez, V. et al), Agramunt, J., Ball, M., Bayarri, J., Carcel, S., Cervera-Villanueva, A., et al. (2012). SiPMs coated with TPB: coating protocol and characterization for NEXT. J. Instrum., 7, P02010.
Abstract: Silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) are the photon detectors chosen for the tracking read-out in NEXT, a neutrinoless beta beta decay experiment which uses a high pressure gaseous xenon time projection chamber (TPC). The reconstruction of event track and topology in this gaseous detector is a key handle for background rejection. Among the commercially available sensors that can be used for tracking, SiPMs offer important advantages, mainly high gain, ruggedness, cost-effectiveness and radio-purity. Their main drawback, however, is their non sensitivity in the emission spectrum of the xenon scintillation (peak at 175 nm). This is overcome by coating these sensors with the organic wavelength shifter tetraphenyl butadiene (TPB). In this paper we describe the protocol developed for coating the SiPMs with TPB and the measurements performed for characterizing the coatings as well as the performance of the coated sensors in the UV-VUV range.
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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Cervera-Villanueva, A., Escudero, L., Gomez-Cadenas, J. J., Monfregola, L., Sorel, M., et al. (2013). Measurement of the inclusive nu(mu) charged current cross section on carbon in the near detector of the T2K experiment. Phys. Rev. D, 87(9), 092003–20pp.
Abstract: T2K has performed the first measurement of nu(mu) inclusive charged current interactions on carbon at neutrino energies of similar to 1 GeV where the measurement is reported as a flux-averaged double differential cross section in muon momentum and angle. The flux is predicted by the beam Monte Carlo and external data, including the results from the NA61/SHINE experiment. The data used for this measurement were taken in 2010 and 2011, with a total of 10.8 x 10(19) protons-on-target. The analysis is performed on 4485 inclusive charged current interaction candidates selected in the most upstream fine-grained scintillator detector of the near detector. The flux-averaged total cross section is <sigma(CC)>(phi) = (6.91 +/- 0.13(stat) +/- 0.84(syst)) x 10(-39) cm(2)/nucleon for a mean neutrino energy of 0.85 GeV.
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