Paper

An assay-based background projection for the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR using Monte Carlo Uncertainty Propagation

Vasilyev, S, D Hervas Aguilar, Schleich, S J, Guiseppe, V E, P -H Chu, Radford, D C, Reine, A L, Detwiler, J A, Tedeschi, D, Guinn, I S, Watkins, S L, Gruszko, J, López-Castaño, J M, Bos, B, Arnquist, I J, Caldwell, T S, Y -D Chan, Kouzes, R T, Meijer, S J, Massarczyk, R, Efremenko, Yu, W Xu, Lannen, T E, Bhimani, K H, Kim, I, Avignone, F T, Clark, M L, Christofferson, C D, Oli, T K, Paudel, L S, A Li, Elliott, S R, Hoppe, E W, Wilkerson, J F, Ejiri, H, Busch, M, C -H Yu, Henning, R, Rielage, K, Blalock, E, Ruof, N W, Hostiuc, A, Fuad, N, Barton, C J, Varner, R L, Green, M P, Pettus, W, Wiseman, C, Schaper, D C, Cuesta, C, Haufe, C R, Kidd, M F, Poon, A W P, Barabash, A S, Martin, R D, Giovanetti, G K

2024

Overview

The background index is an important quantity which is used in projecting and calculating the half-life sensitivity of neutrinoless double-beta decay (\\(0\\nu\\beta\\beta\\)) experiments. A novel analysis framework is presented to calculate the background index using the specific activities, masses and simulated efficiencies of an experiment's components as distributions. This Bayesian framework includes a unified approach to combine specific activities from assay. Monte Carlo uncertainty propagation is used to build a background index distribution from the specific activity, mass and efficiency distributions. This analysis method is applied to the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR, which deployed arrays of high-purity Ge detectors enriched in \\(^{76}\\)Ge to search for \\(0\\nu\\beta\\beta\\). The framework projects a mean background index of \\(\\left[8.95 \\pm 0.36\\right] \\times 10^{-4}\\)cts/(keV kg yr) from \\(^{232}\\)Th and \\(^{238}\\)U in the DEMONSTRATOR's components.

• Publisher: Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
• Subject: Beta decay / Uncertainty