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First proof of topological signature in the high pressure xenon gas TPC with electroluminescence amplification for the NEXT experiment

Journal of High Energy Physics volume 2016, Article number: 104 (2016) Cite this article

A preprint version of the article is available at arXiv.

Abstract

The NEXT experiment aims to observe the neutrinoless double beta decay of 136Xe in a high-pressure xenon gas TPC using electroluminescence (EL) to amplify the signal from ionization. One of the main advantages of this technology is the possibility to reconstruct the topology of events with energies close to Q ββ . This paper presents the first demonstration that the topology provides extra handles to reject background events using data obtained with the NEXT-DEMO prototype.

Single electrons resulting from the interactions of 22Na 1275 keV gammas and electronpositron pairs produced by conversions of gammas from the 228Th decay chain were used to represent the background and the signal in a double beta decay. These data were used to develop algorithms for the reconstruction of tracks and the identification of the energy deposited at the end-points, providing an extra background rejection factor of 24.3 ± 1.4 (stat.)%, while maintaining an efficiency of 66.7 ± 1.% for signal events.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), CSIC & Universitat de València, Calle Catedrático José Beltrán, 2, Paterna, Valencia, 46980, Spain

    P. Ferrario, A. Laing, N. López-March, J. J. Gómez-Cadenas, V. Álvarez, S. Cárcel, A. Cervera, J. Díaz, I. Liubarsky, D. Lorca, J. Martín-Albo, A. Martínez, F. Monrabal, M. Monserrate, J. Muñoz Vidal, M. Nebot-Guinot, P. Novella, M. Querol, J. Renner, J. Rodríguez, L. Serra, A. Simón, M. Sorel & N. Yahlali

  2. Departamento de Fisica, Universidade de Coimbra, Rua Larga, Coimbra, 3004-516, Portugal

    F. I. G. Borges, C. A. N. Conde, L. M. P. Fernandes, E. D. C. Freitas, C. A. O. Henriques, C. M. B. Monteiro, F. P. Santos & J. M. F. dos Santos

  3. Lab. de Física Nuclear y Astropartículas, Universidad de Zaragoza, Calle Pedro Cerbuna, 12, Zaragoza, 50009, Spain

    S. Cebrián, T. Dafni, I. G. Irastorza, G. Luzón & J. A. Villar

  4. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California, 94720, U.S.A.

    V. M. Gehman, A. Goldschmidt, T. Miller, D. Nygren, D. Shuman & J. F. Toledo

  5. Instituto de Instrumentación para Imagen Molecular (I3M), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera, s/n, Edificio 8B, Valencia, 46022, Spain

    R. Esteve, A. Marí & F. J. Mora

  6. Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Joliot-Curie 6, Dubna, 141980, Russia

    Z. Tsamalaidze

  7. Institute of Nanostructures, Nanomodelling and Nanofabrication (i3N), Universidade de Aveiro, Campus de Santiago, Aveiro, 3810-193, Portugal

    C. D. R. Azevedo, A. L. Ferreira, L. M. Moutinho & J. F. C. A. Veloso

  8. Centro de Investigaciones, Universidad Antonio Nariño, Carretera 3 este No. 47A-15, Bogotá, Colombia

    R. M. Gutiérrez, M. Losada & H. Yepes-Ramírez

  9. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, 12 Physics Hall, Ames, Iowa, 50011-3160, U.S.A.

    J. Hauptman

  10. Instituto Gallego de Física de Altas Energías (IGFAE), Univ. de Santiago de Compostela, Campus sur, Rúa Xosé María Suárez Núñez, s/n, Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Spain

    J. A. Hernando Morata & G. Martínez-Lema

  11. Departamento de Física Teórica, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco, Madrid, 28049, Spain

    L. Labarga & J. Pérez

  12. Dpto. de Mecánica de Medios Continuos y Teoría de Estructuras, Univ. Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera, s/n, Valencia, 46071, Spain

    J. L. Pérez Aparicio

  13. Escola Politècnica Superior, Universitat de Girona, Av. Montilivi, s/n, Girona, 17071, Spain

    L. Ripoll & J. Torrent

  14. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, 77843-4242, U.S.A.

    C. Sofka, R. Webb & J. T. White

  15. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois, 60510, U.S.A.

    M. Diesburg, P. Lebrun & A. Para

  16. CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research, Geneva, 1211, Switzerland

    D. González-Díaz

Authors
  1. P. Ferrario
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  2. A. Laing
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  3. N. López-March
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  5. V. Álvarez
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  6. C. D. R. Azevedo
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  16. L. M. P. Fernandes
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  18. E. D. C. Freitas
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Consortia

The NEXT collaboration

Corresponding author

Correspondence to P. Ferrario.

Additional information

ArXiv ePrint: 1507.05902

Deceased (J. T. White).

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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The NEXT collaboration., Ferrario, P., Laing, A. et al. First proof of topological signature in the high pressure xenon gas TPC with electroluminescence amplification for the NEXT experiment. J. High Energ. Phys. 2016, 104 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01(2016)104

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01(2016)104

Keywords

  • Dark Matter and Double Beta Decay