Journal Article

Background Suppression in Massive TeO2 Bolometers with Neganov–Luke Amplified Light Detectors

de Marcillac, P., Dumoulin, L., Giuliani, A., Casali, N., Nagorny, S. S., Nones, C., Pagnanini, L., Olivieri, E., Pirro, S., Marnieros, S., Poda, D., Schäeffner, K., Tenconi, M., Pattavina, L., Mancuso, M., Rusconi, C.

2016

Overview

Bolometric detectors are excellent devices for the investigation of neutrinoless double-beta decay ( 0 ν β β ). The observation of such decay would demonstrate the violation of lepton number, and at the same time, it would necessarily imply that neutrinos are Majorana particles. The sensitivity of cryogenic detectors based on TeO 2 is strongly limited by the α -background in the region of interest for the 0 ν β β of 130 Te. It has been demonstrated that particle identification in TeO 2 bolometers is possible, measuring the Cherenkov light produced by particle interactions. However, the discrimination efficiency is low, and an event-by-event identification with NTD-based light detectors has to be demonstrated. We will discuss the performance of a highly sensitive light detector exploiting the Neganov–Luke effect for signal amplification. The detector, being operated with NTD thermistor and coupled to a 750 g TeO 2 crystal, shows the ability for an event-by-event identification of electron/gamma and α particles. The obtained results demonstrate the possibility to enhance the sensitivity of TeO 2 -based 0 ν β β experiment to an unprecedented level.

• Publisher: Springer US
• Subject: Characterization and Evaluation of Materials / Condensed Matter Physics / Magnetic Materials / Magnetism / Physics / Physics and Astronomy