This paper describes ultrapurification of isotopically enriched calcium and molybdenum compounds and
40
Ca
100
MoO
4
calcium molybdate growth charge in order to remove radioactive uranium, thorium, ...and radium impurities.
40
Ca
100
MoO
4
single crystals grown from such charges are needed for the fabrication of scintillator elements of the cryogenic detector for the AMoRE project: a search for
100
Mo neutrino-less double-beta decay.
Abstract Neutrinoless double- $$\beta $$ β decay of $$^{76}$$ 76 Ge is searched for with germanium detectors where source and detector of the decay are identical. For the success of future ...experiments it is important to increase the mass of the detectors. We report here on the characterization and testing of five prototype detectors manufactured in inverted coaxial (IC) geometry from material enriched to 88% in $$^{76}$$ 76 Ge. IC detectors combine the large mass of the traditional semi-coaxial Ge detectors with the superior resolution and pulse shape discrimination power of point contact detectors which exhibited so far much lower mass. Their performance has been found to be satisfactory both when operated in vacuum cryostat and bare in liquid argon within the Gerda setup. The measured resolutions at the Q-value for double- $$\beta $$ β decay of $$^{76}$$ 76 Ge ( $$Q_{\beta \beta }$$ Q β β = 2039 keV) are about 2.1 keV full width at half maximum in vacuum cryostat. After 18 months of operation within the ultra-low background environment of the GERmanium Detector Array (Gerda) experiment and an accumulated exposure of 8.5 kg $$\cdot $$ · year, the background index after analysis cuts is measured to be $$4.9^{+7.3}_{-3.4}\times 10^{-4} \ \text {counts}/(\text {keV} \cdot \text {kg} \cdot \text {year})$$ 4 . 9 - 3.4 + 7.3 × 10 - 4 counts / ( keV · kg · year ) around $$Q_{\beta \beta }$$ Q β β . This work confirms the feasibility of IC detectors for the next-generation experiment Legend.
Neutrinoless double-
decay of
Ge is searched for with germanium detectors where source and detector of the decay are identical. For the success of future experiments it is important to increase the ...mass of the detectors. We report here on the characterization and testing of five prototype detectors manufactured in inverted coaxial (IC) geometry from material enriched to 88% in
Ge. IC detectors combine the large mass of the traditional semi-coaxial Ge detectors with the superior resolution and pulse shape discrimination power of point contact detectors which exhibited so far much lower mass. Their performance has been found to be satisfactory both when operated in vacuum cryostat and bare in liquid argon within the Gerda setup. The measured resolutions at the
-value for double-
decay of
Ge (
= 2039 keV) are about 2.1 keV full width at half maximum in vacuum cryostat. After 18 months of operation within the ultra-low background environment of the GERmanium Detector Array (Gerda) experiment and an accumulated exposure of 8.5 kg
year, the background index after analysis cuts is measured to be
around
. This work confirms the feasibility of IC detectors for the next-generation experiment Legend.
The GERmanium Detector Array (Gerda) experiment located at the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory (Italy), is looking for the neutrinoless double beta decay of 76Ge, by using high-purity germanium detectors ...made from isotopically enriched material. The combination of the novel experimental design, the careful material selection for radio-purity and the active/passive shielding techniques result in a very low residual background at the Q-value of the decay, about 10−3 cts/(keV-kg-yr). This makes GERDA the first experiment in the field to be background-free for the complete design exposure of 100 kg-yr. A search for neutrinoless double beta decay was performed with a total exposure of 46.7 kg-yr: 23.2 kg-yr come from the second phase (Phase II) of the experiment, in which the background is reduced by about a factor of ten with respect to the previous phase. The analysis presented in this paper includes 12.4 kg-yr of new Phase II data. No evidence for a possible signal is found: the lower limit for the half-life of 76Ge is 8.0 * 1025 yr at 90% CL. The experimental median sensitivity is 5.8 * 1025 yr. The experiment is currently taking data. As it is running in a background-free regime, its sensitivity grows linearly with exposure and it is expected to surpass 1026 yr within 2018.
The detectors are made from germanium with the fraction of the 76Ge isotope enriched from 7.8% to about 87%. Since the source and the detector of Ovßß decay are identical in this calorimetric ...approach, the detection efficiency is high. A rock overburden of about 3,500 m water equivalent removes the hadronic components of cosmic ray showers and reduces the muon flux at the experiment by six orders of magnitude, to 1.2 muons m-2 h-1.
Many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics explain the dominance of matter over antimatter in our Universe by neutrinos being their own antiparticles. This would imply the existence of ...neutrinoless double- decay, which is an extremely rare lepton-number-violating radioactive decay process whose detection requires the utmost background suppression. Among the programmes that aim to detect this decay, the GERDA Collaboration is searching for neutrinoless double- decay of sup.76Ge by operating bare detectors, made of germanium with an enriched sup.76Ge fraction, in liquid argon. After having completed Phase I of data taking, we have recently launched Phase II. Here we report that in GERDA Phase II we have achieved a background level of approximately 10sup.3 counts keVsup.1 kgsup.1 yrsup.1. This implies that the experiment is background-free, even when increasing the exposure up to design level. This is achieved by use of an active veto system, superior germanium detector energy resolution and improved background recognition of our new detectors. No signal of neutrinoless double- decay was found when Phase I and Phase II data were combined, and we deduce a lower-limit half-life of 5.310sup.25 years at the 90 per cent confidence level. Our half-life sensitivity of 4.010sup.25 years is competitive with the best experiments that use a substantially larger isotope mass. The potential of an essentially background-free search for neutrinoless double- decay will facilitate a larger germanium experiment with sensitivity levels that will bring us closer to clarifying whether neutrinos are their own antiparticles.
A search for neutrinoless ... decay processes accompanied with Majoron emission has been performed using data collected during Phase I of the GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) experiment at the ...Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso of INFN (Italy). Processes with spectral indices ... were searched for. No signals were found and lower limits of the order of 10... yr on their half-lives were derived, yielding substantially improved results compared to previous experiments with ...Ge. A new result for the half-life of the neutrino-accompanied ... decay of ...Ge with significantly reduced uncertainties is also given, resulting in ... yr.
The results of measurements of natural radioactive isotopes content in different source materials of natural and enriched composition used for CaMoO4 scintillation crystal growing are presented. The ...crystals are to be used in the experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay of 100Mo.
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