$^{42}$Ar Production and Injection to a Liquid Argon Environment for Background Mitigation Studies
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866908636083650560 |
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| author | Schwarz, Mario Vogl, Christoph Lay, Niko N. P. N. Comellato, Tommaso Korschinek, Gunther Neuberger, Moritz Moras, Oskar Krause, Patrick Schönert, Stefan |
| author_facet | Schwarz, Mario Vogl, Christoph Lay, Niko N. P. N. Comellato, Tommaso Korschinek, Gunther Neuberger, Moritz Moras, Oskar Krause, Patrick Schönert, Stefan |
| contents | Atmosphere-sourced argon contains traces of $^{42}$Ar, whose $β^-$-decaying progeny $^{42}$K represents a significant intrinsic background for rare-event experiments using liquid argon (LAr) as detector or shielding medium. Understanding and mitigating this background is crucial for current and future large-scale detectors in neutrino and dark-matter physics. To enable controlled studies of $^{42}$K behavior and suppression techniques, $^{42}$Ar was produced by irradiating natural argon with 34 MeV $^{7}$Li$^{3+}$ ions at the Maier-Leibnitz-Laboratorium tandem accelerator, using beam currents of $101 \pm 5$ nA and $140 \pm 5$ nA, yielding $476 \pm 9$ Bq within two weeks, corresponding to a production rate of $\sim 1 \times 10^{6}$ atoms$\,$s$^{-1}$. The activated argon was injected into the one-ton SCARF cryostat, where two HPGe detectors monitored the subsequent $^{42}$K activity build-up. A time-dependent model describing $^{42}$Ar mixing and $^{42}$K equilibration in LAr yielded characteristic mixing time constants between one and two days. The established production and injection capability provides a reproducible platform for high-statistics $^{42}$K background studies, essential for developing and validating suppression strategies for next-generation LAr-based rare-event experiments such as LEGEND-1000. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_05336 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | $^{42}$Ar Production and Injection to a Liquid Argon Environment for Background Mitigation Studies Schwarz, Mario Vogl, Christoph Lay, Niko N. P. N. Comellato, Tommaso Korschinek, Gunther Neuberger, Moritz Moras, Oskar Krause, Patrick Schönert, Stefan Instrumentation and Detectors Nuclear Experiment Atmosphere-sourced argon contains traces of $^{42}$Ar, whose $β^-$-decaying progeny $^{42}$K represents a significant intrinsic background for rare-event experiments using liquid argon (LAr) as detector or shielding medium. Understanding and mitigating this background is crucial for current and future large-scale detectors in neutrino and dark-matter physics. To enable controlled studies of $^{42}$K behavior and suppression techniques, $^{42}$Ar was produced by irradiating natural argon with 34 MeV $^{7}$Li$^{3+}$ ions at the Maier-Leibnitz-Laboratorium tandem accelerator, using beam currents of $101 \pm 5$ nA and $140 \pm 5$ nA, yielding $476 \pm 9$ Bq within two weeks, corresponding to a production rate of $\sim 1 \times 10^{6}$ atoms$\,$s$^{-1}$. The activated argon was injected into the one-ton SCARF cryostat, where two HPGe detectors monitored the subsequent $^{42}$K activity build-up. A time-dependent model describing $^{42}$Ar mixing and $^{42}$K equilibration in LAr yielded characteristic mixing time constants between one and two days. The established production and injection capability provides a reproducible platform for high-statistics $^{42}$K background studies, essential for developing and validating suppression strategies for next-generation LAr-based rare-event experiments such as LEGEND-1000. |
| title | $^{42}$Ar Production and Injection to a Liquid Argon Environment for Background Mitigation Studies |
| topic | Instrumentation and Detectors Nuclear Experiment |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.05336 |