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Design of a multiple-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer for barium-tagging

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Abstract

The search for neutrinoless double beta decay requires increasingly advanced methods of background reduction. A bold approach to solving this problem, in experiments using 136Xe, is to extract and identify the daughter 136Ba ion produced by double beta decay. Tagging events in this manner allows for a virtually background-free verification of double beta decay signals. Various approaches are being pursued by the nEXO collaboration to achieve Ba-tagging. A Multi-Reflection Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (MR TOF) has been designed and optimized as one of the ion-identification methods, where it will investigate the ion-extraction efficiency, as well as provide further identification of the Ba isotope. The envisioned mode of operation allows the MR TOF to achieve a quickly adjustable mass-range and resolution, with simulations suggesting that a mass-resolving power of 140,000 is within reach. This work will discuss the MR TOF design and the methods employed to simulate and optimize it.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Timo Dickel, at GSI, and T. Eronen, at the University of Jyväskylä, for helpful discussions concerning the design of the MRTOF. We also thank Maxime Brodeur and Brad Schulz for supplying information and designs of the MR TOF at the University of Notre Dame. We would also like to thank the members of the nEXO collaboration, for their support and guidance. A special thanks also to Thanh Nguyen, for useful feedback on this manuscript.

Funding

This work has been supported by NSERC, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the McDonald Institute (CFREF) in Canada. nEXO is supported by the Offices of Nuclear and High Energy Physics within DOE’s Office of Science, and NSF in the United States; by NSERC, CFI, FRQNT, NRC, and the McDonald Institute (CFREF) in Canada; by SNF in Switzerland; by IBS in Korea; by RFBR in Russia; and by CAS and ISTCP in China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. McGill University, Montreal, Canada

    K. Murray, Y. Ito & T. Brunner

  2. TRIUMF, Vancouver, Canada

    J. Dilling, R. Gornea, A. A. Kwiatkowski, Y. Lan, M. P. Reiter & T. Brunner

  3. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    J. Dilling & Y. Lan

  4. Carelton University, Ottawa, Canada

    R. Gornea & T. Koffas

  5. Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe (FAIR GmbH), Darmstadt, Germany

    V. Varentsov

  6. Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia

    V. Varentsov

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  1. K. Murray
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  2. J. Dilling
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  4. Y. Ito
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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Y. Ito is now at JAEA.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Trapped Charged Particles and Fundamental Physics (TCP 2018), Traverse City, Michigan, USA, 30 September-5 October 2018

Edited by Ryan Ringle, Stefan Schwarz, Alain Lapierre, Oscar Naviliat-Cuncic, Jaideep Singh and Georg Bollen

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Murray, K., Dilling, J., Gornea, R. et al. Design of a multiple-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer for barium-tagging. Hyperfine Interact 240, 97 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10751-019-1632-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10751-019-1632-5

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