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Study of silicon detectors for high resolution radioxenon measurements

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Abstract

Measurement of radioactive xenon in the atmosphere is one of several techniques to detect nuclear weapons testing, typically using either scintillator based coincidence beta/gamma detectors or germanium based gamma only detectors. Silicon detectors have a number of potential advantages over these detectors (high resolution, low background, sensitive to photons and electrons) and are explored in this work as a possible alternative. Using energy resolutions from measurements and detection efficiencies from simulations of characteristic electron and photon energies, the minimum detectable concentration for Xe isotopes was estimated for several possible detector geometries. Test coincidence spectra were acquired with a prototype detector.

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Acknowledgments

We greatly appreciate the help of S. Biegalski and T. Tipping for their help with Xe measurements at the University of Texas at Austin. This work was supported by the US Department of Energy under Award No. DE-SC0004272.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. XIA LLC, 31057 Genstar Rd, Hayward, CA, USA

    Wolfgang Hennig, Christopher E. Cox, Stephen J. Asztalos, Hui Tan, Patrick J. Franz, Peter M. Grudberg & William K. Warburton

  2. Amptek, Inc, 14 De Angelo Drive, Bedford, MA, 01730, USA

    Alan Huber

Authors
  1. Wolfgang Hennig
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  2. Christopher E. Cox
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  3. Stephen J. Asztalos
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  4. Hui Tan
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  5. Patrick J. Franz
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  6. Peter M. Grudberg
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  7. William K. Warburton
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  8. Alan Huber
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Correspondence to Wolfgang Hennig.

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Hennig, W., Cox, C.E., Asztalos, S.J. et al. Study of silicon detectors for high resolution radioxenon measurements. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 296, 675–681 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-012-2053-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-012-2053-y

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