TY  - JOUR
AU  - NEXT Collaboration
AU  - Carcel, S.
AU  - Carrion, J. V.
AU  - Felkai, R.
AU  - Kekic, M.
AU  - Lopez-March, N.
AU  - Martin-Albo, J.
AU  - Martinez, A.
AU  - Martinez-Lema, G.
AU  - Muñoz Vidal, J.
AU  - Novella, P.
AU  - Palmeiro, B.
AU  - Querol, M.
AU  - Romo-Luque, C.
AU  - Sorel, M.
AU  - Uson, A.
AU  - Yahlali, N.
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020//
TI  - Mitigation of backgrounds from cosmogenic Xe-137 in xenon gas experiments using He-3 neutron capture
T2  - J. Phys. G
JO  - Journal of Physics G
SP  - 075001
EP  - 17pp
VL  - 47
IS  - 7
PB  - Iop Publishing Ltd
KW  - gaseous detectors
KW  - scintillators
KW  - scintillation and light emission processes
KW  - solid
KW  - gas and liquid scintillators
AB  - Xe-136 is used as the target medium for many experiments searching for 0 nu beta beta. Despite underground operation, cosmic muons that reach the laboratory can produce spallation neutrons causing activation of detector materials. A potential background that is difficult to veto using muon tagging comes in the form of Xe-137 created by the capture of neutrons on Xe-136. This isotope decays via beta decay with a half-life of 3.8 min and a Q(beta) of similar to 4.16 MeV. This work proposes and explores the concept of adding a small percentage of He-3 to xenon as a means to capture thermal neutrons and reduce the number of activations in the detector volume. When using this technique we find the contamination from Xe-137 activation can be reduced to negligible levels in tonne and multi-tonne scale high pressure gas xenon neutrinoless double beta decay experiments running at any depth in an underground laboratory.
SN  - 0954-3899
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.11147
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6471/ab8915
DO  - 10.1088/1361-6471/ab8915
LA  - English
N1  - WOS:000537753800001
ID  - NEXTCollaboration_etal2020
ER  -