The Majorana Demonstrator calibration system
Abstract
The MAJORANA Collaboration is searching for the neutrinoless double-beta decay of the nucleus Ge. The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is an array of germanium detectors deployed with the aim of implementing background reduction techniques suitable for a 1-tonne Ge-based search. The ultra low-background conditions require regular calibrations to verify proper function of the detectors. Radioactive line sources can be deployed around the cryostats containing the detectors for regular energy calibrations. When measuring in low-background mode, these line sources have to be stored outside the shielding so they do not contribute to the background. The deployment and the retraction of the source are designed to be controlled by the data acquisition system and do not require any direct human interaction. In this paper, we detail the design requirements and implementation of the calibration apparatus, which provides the event rates needed to define the pulse-shape cuts and energy calibration used in the final analysis as well as data that can be compared to simulations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1702.02466,
title = {The Majorana Demonstrator calibration system},
author = {N. Abgrall and I. J. Arnquist and F. T. Avignone and A. S. Barabash and F. E. Bertrand and M. Boswell and A. W. Bradley and V. Brudanin and M. Busch and M. Buuck and T. S. Caldwell and C. D. Christofferson and P. -H. Chu and C. Cuesta and J. A. Detwiler and C. Dunagan and Yu. Efremenko and H. Ejiri and S. R. Elliott and Z. Fu and V. M. Gehman and T. Gilliss and G. K. Giovanetti and J. Goett and M. P. Green and J. Gruszko and I. S. Guinn and V. E. Guiseppe and C. R. Haufe and R. Henning and E. W. Hoppe and M. A. Howe and B. R. Jasinski and K. J. Keeter and M. F. Kidd and S. I. Konovalov and R. T. Kouzes and A. M. Lopez and J. MacMullin and R. D. Martin and R. Massarczyk S. J. Meijer and S. Mertens and J. L. Orrell and C. O'Shaughnessy and A. W. P. Poon and D. C. Radford and J. Rager and A. L. Reine and K. Rielage and R. G. H. Robertson and B. Shanks and M. Shirchenko and A. M. Suriano and D. Tedeschi and J. E. Trimble and R. L. Varner and S. Vasilyev and K. Vetter and K. Vorren and B. R. White and J. F. Wilkerson and C. Wiseman and W. Xu and C. -H. Yu and V. Yumatov and I. Zhitnikov and B. X. Zhu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.02466},
year = {2018}
}