Scintillation balloon for neutrinoless double-beta decay search with liquid scintillator detectors. (16th July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Obara, S; Gando, Y; Ishidoshiro, K
• Is Part Of: Progress of theoretical and experimental physics. Volume 2019:Number 7(2019)
• Publication Date: 2019-07-16
• Subjects: H20; Physics -- Periodicals; Mathematical physics -- Periodicals; 530.05
• DOI: 10.1093/ptep/ptz064
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-3911

Abstract

Abstract: Environmental radioactivity is a dominant background for rare decay search experiments, and it is difficult to completely remove such an impurity from detector vessels. We propose a scintillation balloon as the active vessel of a liquid scintillator in order to identify this undesirable radioactivity. According to our feasibility studies, the scintillation balloon enables the bismuth–polonium sequential decay to be tagged with a 99.7% efficiency, assuming a KamLAND-type (KamLAND = Kamioka Liquid scintillator AntiNeutrino Detector) liquid scintillator detector. This tagging of sequential decay using alpha rays from the polonium improves the sensitivity to neutrinoless double-beta decay while rejecting beta ray background from the bismuth.