Autor(es): Borges, F. I. G. M. ; Conde, C. A. N. ; Escada, J. ; Fernandes, L. M. P. ; Freitas, E. D. C. ; Henriques, C. A. O. ; Mano, R.D.P. ; Marques, A. P. ; Monteiro, C. M. B. ; Santos, F. P. ; Santos, J. M. F. dos ; Teixeira, J. M. R. ; NEXT Collaboration
Data: 2023
Identificador Persistente: https://hdl.handle.net/10316/112196
Origem: Estudo Geral - Universidade de Coimbra
The search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0) remains one of the most compelling experimental avenues for the discovery in the neutrino sector. Electroluminescent gas-phase time projection chambers are well suited to 0 searches due to their intrinsically precise energy resolution and topological event identification capabilities. Scalability to ton- and multi-ton masses requires readout of large-area electroluminescent regions with fine spatial resolution, low radiogenic backgrounds, and a scalable data acquisition system. This paper presents a detector prototype that records event topology in an electroluminescent xenon gas TPC via VUV image-intensified cameras. This enables an extendable readout of large tracking planes with commercial devices that reside almost entirely outside of the active medium. Following further development in intermediate scale demonstrators, this technique may represent a novel and enlargeable method for topological event imaging in 0.
This work was supported by the US Department of Energy under awards DE-SC0019054 and DESC0019223, the US National Science Foundation under award number NSF CHE 2004111 and the Robert A Welch Foundation under award number Y-2031-20200401 (University of Texas Arlington). FJS was supported by the DOE Nuclear Physics Traineeship Program award DE-SC0022359. The NEXT Collaboration also acknowledges support from the following agencies and institutions: the European Research Council (ERC) under Grant Agreement No. 951281-BOLD; the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (2014–2020) under Grant Agreement No. 957202-HIDDEN; the MCIN/AEI of Spain and ERDF A way of making Europe under grants RTI2018-095979 and PID2021-125475NB , the Severo Ochoa Program grant CEX2018-000867-S and the Ramón y Cajal program grant RYC-2015-18820; the Generalitat Valenciana of Spain under grants PROMETEO/2021/087 and CIDEGENT/2019/049; the Department of Education of the Basque Government of Spain under the predoctoral training program nondoctoral research personnel; the Portuguese FCT under project UID/FIS/04559/2020 to fund the activities of LIBPhys-UC; the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) under grant 1223/21; the Pazy Foundation (Israel) under grants 310/22, 315/19 and 465; the US Department of Energy under contracts number DE-AC02-06CH11357 (Argonne National Laboratory), DE-AC02-07CH11359 (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), DE-FG02-13ER42020 (Texas A&M). Finally, we are grateful to the Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc for hosting and supporting the NEXT experiment.
