Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Studying Properties Of Xenon Doped Argon And Developing Optical Simulation Techniques For The Legend Collaboration, A Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Experiment, Neil Christopher Mcfadden Dr

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

Neutrinoless double beta decay is a hypothesized lepton-number-violating process in which two neutrons decay to two protons, producing two electrons but no electron antineutrinos. The LEGEND collaboration will search for this decay in ⁷⁶Ge. To improve the argon active veto for LEGEND-1000, xenon doped argon was explored as an alternative active volume. Simulations using argon doped with 10 ppm xenon and pure liquid argon were used to predict the light yield from cosmic muons in a 100 liter cryogenic vessel. The simulations predicted that xenon doping would yield 1.83+/-0.02 more light, while an increase of 1.81+/-0.05 was measured. From …