Related papers: Radioactive contamination of scintillators
Nowadays, the current threat of international terrorism is set to a severe level, demanding worldwide enhanced security. Radioactive materials that could be fashioned into a radiation dispersal device typically emit gamma rays, while…
Liquid-scintillator-based detectors are a robust technology that scales well to large volumes. For this reason, they are attractive for experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay. A combination of improved photo-detection…
The suppression of spurious events in the region of interest for neutrinoless double beta decay will play a major role in next generation experiments. The background of detectors based on the technology of cryogenic calorimeters is expected…
Neutrino oscillations are studied employing sources of low energy monoenergetic neutrinos following electron capture by the nucleus and measuring electron recoils. Since the neutrino energy is very low the oscillation length appearing in…
Atmospheric neutrinos play a vital role in generating irreducible backgrounds in liquid-scintillator (LS) detectors via their neutral-current (NC) interactions with $^{12}$C nuclei. These interactions may affect a wide range of research…
New experimental research programs in the field of neutrino physics are calling for new detectors with large masses, high energy resolution and good background rejection capabilities. This paper presents a novel hybrid organic/inorganic…
Astronomical observations from small galaxies to the largest scales in the universe can be consistently explained by the simple idea of dark matter. The nature of dark matter is however still unknown. Empirically it cannot be any of the…
We present a technique for separating nuclear double beta decay ($\beta\beta$-decay) events from background neutrino interactions due to $^{8}$B decays in the sun. This background becomes dominant in a kiloton-scale liquid-scintillator…
New generation dark matter experiments aim at exploring the 10e-9 - 10e-10 pb cross-section region for the WIMP-nucleon scalar interactions. Neutrons produced in the detector components are one of the main factors that can limit detector…
Among the detectors used for rare event searches, such as neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (0$\nu$DBD) and Dark Matter experiments, bolometers are very promising because of their favorable properties (excellent energy resolution, high…
Coherent neutrino-nucleon scattering offers a unique approach in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model. When used in conjunction with mono-energetic neutrino sources, the technique can be sensitive to the existence of light…
Radioactivity was recently discovered as a source of decoherence and correlated errors for the real-world implementation of superconducting quantum processors. In this work, we measure levels of radioactivity present in a typical laboratory…
Active background reduction in high resolution calorimeters is a promising approach to achieve ultimate sensitivity in neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. We propose Cerenkov emission from beta rays in bolometric crystals as a…
The sensitivity of astronomical X-ray detectors is limited by the instrumental background. The background is especially important when observing low surface brightness sources that are critical for many of the science cases targeted by…
JUNO is a massive liquid scintillator detector with a primary scientific goal of determining the neutrino mass ordering by studying the oscillated anti-neutrino flux coming from two nuclear power plants at 53 km distance. The expected…
Neutrinoless double beta decay would be a key to understanding the nature of neutrino masses. The next generation of High Purity Germanium experiments will have to be operated with a background rate of better than 10^-5 counts/(kg y keV) in…
The 'Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon TPC (NEXT)', intended to investigate neutrinoless double beta decay, requires extremely low background levels. An extensive material screening and selection process to assess the radioactivity of…
We have re-purposed portable plastic scintillator muon detectors, designed by the CosmicWatch project, for the measurement of electrons emitted by the decay of radioactive sources. For the latter purpose we have first calibrated the…
To date, the search for radio technosignatures has focused on sky location as a primary discriminant between technosignature candidates and anthropogenic radio frequency interference (RFI). In this work, we investigate the possibility of…
An increasing number of applications of scintillators at low temperatures, particularly in cryogenic experiments searching for rare events, has motivated the investigation of scintillation properties of materials over a wide temperature…