222Rn emanation measurements for the XENON1T experiment

Open Access
Authors
Publication date 04-2021
Journal European Physical Journal C
Article number 337
Volume | Issue number 81 | 4
Number of pages 14
Organisations
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Institute of Physics (IoP) - Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEF)
Abstract
The selection of low-radioactive construction materials is of utmost importance for the success of low-energy rare event search experiments. Besides radioactive contaminants in the bulk, the emanation of radioactive radon atoms from material surfaces attains increasing relevance in the effort to further reduce the background of such experiments. In this work, we present the 222Rn emanation measurements performed for the XENON1T dark matter experiment. Together with the bulk impurity screening campaign, the results enabled us to select the radio-purest construction materials, targeting a 222Rn activity concentration of 10μBq/kg in 3.2t of xenon. The knowledge of the distribution of the 222Rn sources allowed us to selectively eliminate problematic components in the course of the experiment. The predictions from the emanation measurements were compared to data of the 222Rn activity concentration in XENON1T. The final 222Rn activity concentration of (4.5±0.1)μBq/kg in the target of XENON1T is the lowest ever achieved in a xenon dark matter experiment.
Document type Article
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-08777-z
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