Removing krypton from xenon by cryogenic distillation to the ppq level
Abstract
The XENON1T experiment aims for the direct detection of dark matter in a cryostat filled with 3.3 tons of liquid xenon. In order to achieve the desired sensitivity, the background induced by radioactive decays inside the detector has to be sufficiently low. One major contributor is the -emitter Kr which is an intrinsic contamination of the xenon. For the XENON1T experiment a concentration of natural krypton in xenon Kr/Xe < 200 ppq (parts per quadrillion, 1 ppq = 10 mol/mol) is required. In this work, the design of a novel cryogenic distillation column using the common McCabe-Thiele approach is described. The system demonstrated a krypton reduction factor of 6.410 with thermodynamic stability at process speeds above 3 kg/h. The resulting concentration of Kr/Xe < 26 ppq is the lowest ever achieved, almost one order of magnitude below the requirements for XENON1T and even sufficient for future dark matter experiments using liquid xenon, such as XENONnT and DARWIN.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1612.04284,
title = {Removing krypton from xenon by cryogenic distillation to the ppq level},
author = {XENON Collaboration and E. Aprile and J. Aalbers and F. Agostini and M. Alfonsi and F. D. Amaro and M. Anthony and F. Arneodo and P. Barrow and L. Baudis and B. Bauermeister and M. L. Benabderrahmane and T. Berger and P. A. Breur and A. Brown and E. Brown and S. Bruenner and G. Bruno and R. Budnik and L. Bütikofer and J. Calvén and J. M. R. Cardoso and M. Cervantes and D. Cichon and D. Coderre and A. P. Colijn and J. Conrad and J. P. Cussonneau and M. P. Decowski and P. de Perio and P. Di Gangi and A. Di Giovanni and S. Diglio and E. Duchovni and G. Eurin and J. Fei and A. D. Ferella and A. Fieguth and D. Franco and W. Fulgione and A. Gallo Rosso and M. Galloway and F. Gao and M. Garbini and C. Geis and L. W. Goetzke and L. Grandi and Z. Greene and C. Grignon and C. Hasterok and E. Hogenbirk and R. Itay and B. Kaminsky and G. Kessler and A. Kish and H. Landsman and R. F. Lang and D. Lellouch and L. Levinson and M. Le Calloch and Q. Lin and S. Lindemann and M. Lindner and J. A. M. Lopes A. Manfredini and I. Maris and T. Marrodán Undagoitia and J. Masbou and F. V. Massoli and D. Masson and D. Mayani and Y. Meng and M. Messina and K. Micheneau and B. Miguez and A. Molinario and M. Murra and J. Naganoma and K. Ni and U. Oberlack and S. E. A. Orrigo and P. Pakarha and B. Pelssers and R. Persiani and F. Piastra and J. Pienaar and M. -C. Piro and V. Pizzella and G. Plante and N. Priel and L. Rauch and S. Reichard and C. Reuter and A. Rizzo and S. Rosendahl and N. Rupp and R. Saldanha and J. M. F. dos Santos and G. Sartorelli and M. Scheibelhut and S. Schindler and J. Schreiner and M. Schumann and L. Scotto Lavina and M. Selvi and P. Shagin and E. Shockley and M. Silva and H. Simgen and M. v. Sivers and A. Stein and D. Thers and A. Tiseni and G. Trinchero and C. Tunnell and N. Upole and H. Wang and Y. Wei and C. Weinheimer and J. Wulf and J. Ye and Y. Zhang and I. Cristescu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.04284},
year = {2017}
}