10–12 Apr 2013
INFN - Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso
Europe/Rome timezone

The BetaCage, an Ultra-sensitive Screener for Surface Contamination

11 Apr 2013, 15:00
1h 20m
E. Fermi auditorium (INFN - Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso)

E. Fermi auditorium

INFN - Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso

SS 17 bis, km 18 + 910, 67100 Assergi (AQ), Italy
poster Fabrication methods and surface contamination control Poster session

Speaker

Dr Raymond Bunker (Syracuse University)

Description

Material screening for identifying low-energy electron emitters and alpha-decaying isotopes is now a prerequisite for rare-event searches (e.g., dark-matter direct detection and neutrinoless double-beta decay) for which surface radiocontamination has become an increasingly important background. The BetaCage, a gaseous neon time-projection chamber, is a proposed ultra-sensitive (and nondestructive) screener for alpha- and beta-emitting surface contaminants to which existing screening facilities are insufficiently sensitive. The expected sensitivity is 0.1 betas (per keV-m^2-day) and 0.1 alphas (per m^2-day), where the former will be limited by Compton scattering of external photons in the screening samples and (thanks to tracking) the latter is expected to be signal-limited; radioassays and simulations indicate backgrounds from detector materials and radon daughters should be subdominant. We will report on details of the background simulations and detector design that provide the discrimination, shielding, and radiopurity necessary to reach our sensitivity goals for a chamber with a 95x95 cm^2 sample area positioned below a 40 cm drift region and monitored by crisscrossed anode and cathode planes consisting of 151 wires each.

Primary author

Dr Raymond Bunker (Syracuse University)

Co-authors

Mr Alex Rider (Caltech) Mr Alex Zahn (Caltech) Mr Boqian Wang (Syracuse University) Prof. Darren Grant (University of Alberta) Dr Mark Kos (Syracuse University) Mr Michael Bowles (Syracuse University) Prof. Richard Schnee (Syracuse University) Dr Robert Nelson (Caltech) Prof. Sunil Golwala (Caltech) Dr Zeeshan Ahmed (Caltech)

Presentation materials