An escape-suppressed, composite high-purity germanium detector of the Clover type has been installed at the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA) facility, deep underground in the Gran Sasso Laboratory, Italy. The laboratory gamma-ray background of the Clover detector has been studied underground at LUNA and, for comparison, also in an overground laboratory. Spectra have been recorded both for the single segments and for the virtual detector formed by online addition of all four segments. The effect of the escape-suppression shield has been studied as well. Despite their generally higher intrinsic background, escape-suppressed detectors are found to be well suited for underground nuclear astrophysics studies. As an example for the advantage of using a composite detector deep underground, the weak ground state branching of the Ep = 223 keV resonance in the 24Mg(p,gamma)25Al reaction is determined with improved precision.
@article{arxiv.1003.6072,
title = {An actively vetoed Clover gamma-detector for nuclear astrophysics at LUNA},
author = {LUNA collaboration and T. Szucs and D. Bemmerer and C. Broggini and A. Caciolli and F. Confortola and P. Corvisiero and Z. Elekes and A. Formicola and Zs. Fulop and G. Gervino and A. Guglielmetti and C. Gustavino and Gy. Gyurky and G. Imbriani and M. Junker and A. Lemut and M. Marta and C. Mazzocchi and R. Menegazzo and P. Prati and V. Roca and C. Rolfs and C. Rossi Alvarez and E. Somorjai and O. Straniero and F. Strieder and F. Terrasi and H. P. Trautvetter},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.6072},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
8 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables; as accepted by Eur. Phys. J. A