Surface adsorption and resonance ionization spectroscopy for barium identification in neutrinoless double beta decay experiments
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Neutrinos are the only elementary particle that could have particle-antiparticle duality, called Majorana nature. If neutrinos do indeed have this property, it could be measured through neutrinoless double-beta decay, a hypothetical nuclear decay. The half-life of this decay is very long, thus the reduction of backgrounds is very important. In searches for neutrinoless double-beta decay in Xe-136, backgrounds in the signal region of interest can be eliminated by recovering the expected daughter nucleus of this decay, Ba-136. This work describes the development of a technique to recover these barium ions from liquid xenon using surface adsorption and identify them using Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (RIS). Barium ions adsorb onto a surface in the liquid xenon, which we remove to a separate vacuum chamber for identification. Laser induced thermal desorption removes atoms from the surface into vacuum, then the barium is re-ionized using RIS and drifted down a time of flight mass spectrometer. RIS has been shown to be both efficient and selective, both favorable aspects for a barium tagging system. The prototype system described here offers both optical spectroscopic and mass spectroscopic confirmation of the barium daughter. Barium tagging is being developed for use in nEXO, a future neutrinoless double-beta decay experiment, and will allow the detector to probe into the normal hierarchy of neutrino masses.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Twelker, Karl |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Physics. |
| Primary advisor | Gratta, Giorgio |
| Thesis advisor | Gratta, Giorgio |
| Thesis advisor | Burchat, P. (Patricia) |
| Thesis advisor | Graham, Peter (Peter Wickelgren) |
| Advisor | Burchat, P. (Patricia) |
| Advisor | Graham, Peter (Peter Wickelgren) |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Karl Twelker. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Physics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Karl Twelker
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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