Radon depletion in xenon boil-off gas

An important background in detectors using liquid xenon for rare event searches arises from the decays of radon and its daughters. We report for the first time a reduction of 222 Rn in the gas phase above a liquid xenon reservoir. We show a reduction factor of ≳ 4 for the 222 Rn concentration in boi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields Particles and fields, 2017-03, Vol.77 (3), p.1-6, Article 143
Main Authors: Bruenner, S., Cichon, D., Lindemann, S., Undagoitia, T. Marrodán, Simgen, H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astronomy
Astrophysics and Cosmology
Comparative analysis
Depletion
Detection equipment
Distillation
Elementary Particles
Hadrons
Heavy Ions
Measurement Science and Instrumentation
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Physics
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Proportional counters
Quantum Field Theories
Quantum Field Theory
Radon
Reduction
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
String Theory
Xenon
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Summary:An important background in detectors using liquid xenon for rare event searches arises from the decays of radon and its daughters. We report for the first time a reduction of 222 Rn in the gas phase above a liquid xenon reservoir. We show a reduction factor of ≳ 4 for the 222 Rn concentration in boil-off xenon gas compared to the radon enriched liquid phase. A semiconductor-based α -detector and miniaturized proportional counters are used to detect the radon. As the radon depletion in the boil-off gas is understood as a single-stage distillation process, this result establishes the suitability of cryogenic distillation to separate radon from xenon down to the 10 - 15  mol/mol level.
ISSN:1434-6044
1434-6052
DOI:10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4676-1