Large size detectors based on Cs2LiYCl6:Ce (CLYC) are capable of performing a combined $γ$-ray and neutron spectrometry and constitute a promising technology for a wide range of applications in nuclear and high energy physics. Due to their novelty, the comprehensive characterization of the performance of individual CLYC detectors is of great importance for determining their range of applicability. In this work we report on a wide series measurements performed with a commercial 2"x2" CLYC crystal. Good energy and timing resolution values of 4.7% (@ 662 keV) and 1340 ps (FWHM), respectively, were achieved, and a neutron/$γ$ separation figure of merit value of 4.2 was obtained. A dedicated measurement for investigating the intrinsic background of the detector was performed at the Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc (Spain). It evidenced a sizeable contamination in the detector materials which poses limits in the use of CLYC in low background experiments. In addition, detailed Monte Carlo simulations with the GEANT4 toolkit were performed for modeling the response function of the CLYC detector to gamma-rays. An excellent agreement with the experimental data has been achieved.
Cerium-doped Cs$_2$LiYCl$_6$ (CLYC) and Cs$_2$LiLaBr$_x$Cl$_{6-x}$ (CLLBC) are scintillators in the elpasolite family that are attractive options for resource-constrained applications due to their ability to detect both gamma rays and neutrons within a single volume. Space-based detectors are one such application, however, the radiation environment in space can over time damage the crystal structure of the elpasolites, leading to degraded performance. We have exposed 4 samples each of CLYC and CLLBC to 800 MeV protons at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. The samples were irradiated with a…
Sufficient current pulse information of nuclear radiation detectors can be retained by direct waveform digitization owing to the improvement of digitizer's performance. In many circumstances, reasonable cost and power consumption are on demand while the energy resolution and PSD performance should be ensured simultaneously for detectors. This paper will quantitatively analyse the influence of vertical resolution and sampling rate of digitizers on the energy resolution and PSD performance. The energy resolution and PSD performance can be generally optimized by improving the sampling rate and EN…
The fast neutrons produced by a calibrated 241Am-Be source were detected by two different Cs2LiYCl6:Ce (CLYC) scintillator detectors. The two cylindrical crystals (1"x1" in size) were enriched with more than 99% of 7Li (C7LYC) and with about 95% of 6Li (C6LYC), respectively. Both crystals can detect fast neutrons whereas only C6LYC can also detect thermal neutrons, due to the presence of 6Li. The measurement was performed at the L.A.S.A. Laboratory of INFN and University of Milano (Italy). To identify the neutron events, the Pulse-Shape-Discrimination technique was used. A value for the detect…
Cosmic muon induced neutrons in Pb are measured by direct neutron detection, using CLYC detectors. The detector set-up and preliminary results are presented.
We utilise muons from cosmic ray to explore hidden underground archaeological structures. Presented here is the design, simulation studies and first laboratory results of a compact, scintillators based, cosmic ray muon telescope for underground muon radiography.
The most important underground detectors addressing Cosmic Ray physics are described, with a special emphasis on the description of the used technology.
Initial performance of the UltraLo-1800 alpha particle detector at the 700 m deep Yangyang underground laboratory in Korea is described. The ionization detector uses Argon as a counting gas for measuring alpha events of a sample. We present initial calibration results and low-activity sample measurements based on the detector's pulse discrimination method and a hardware veto. A likelihood analysis that shows a separation of a bulk component from a surface component with a contamination depth from $^{210}$Po alpha particles using simulated models is presented.
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a large and high precision liquid scintillator detector under construction in the south of China. With its 20 kt target mass, it aims to achieve an unprecedented 3% energy resolution at 1 MeV. Its main goal is to study the disappearance of reactor antineutrino to determine the neutrino mass ordering, and to precisely measure the mixing parameters $θ_{12}$, $Δm^2_{12}$, and $Δm ^2_{ee}$. It also aims to detect neutrinos emitted from radioactive processes taking place within the inner layers of the Earth (geoneutrinos), as well as neutrinos…
An electron accelerator in the 100 MeV range, similar to the one used at BNL's Accelerator test Facility, for example, would have some advantages as a calibration tool for water cerenkov or Liquid Argon neutrino detectors. We describe a compact secondary beam design that could be used for this application.
A number of current physics topics, including long-baseline neutrino physics, proton decay searches, and supernova neutrino searches, hope to someday construct huge (50 kiloton to megaton) particle detectors in shielded, underground sites. With today's practices, this requires the costly excavation and stabilization of large rooms in mines. In this paper, we propose utilizing the caverns created by the solution mining of salt. The challenge is that such caverns must be filled with pressurized fluid and do not admit human access. We sketch some possible methods of installing familiar detector t…
The underground muon detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is aimed at attaining direct measurements of the muonic component of extensive air showers produced by cosmic rays with energy from $10^{16.5}$ eV up to the region of the ankle (around $10^{18.7}$ eV). It consists of two nested triangular grids of underground scintillators with 433 m, and 750 m spacings and a total of 71 positions, each with 192 scintillator strips (30 m$^2$) deployed 2.3 m underground. The light produced by impinging muons in the scintillators is propagated with optical fibers towards an array of silicon photomulti…
The Argon Dark Matter experiment is a ton-scale double phase argon Time Projection Chamber designed for direct Dark Matter searches. It combines the detection of scintillation light together with the ionisation charge in order to discriminate the background (electron recoils) from the WIMP signals (nuclear recoils). After a successful operation on surface at CERN, the detector was recently installed in the underground Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc, and the commissioning phase is ongoing. We describe the status of the installation and present first results from data collected underground …
Germanium detectors with sub-keV sensitivities open a window to search for low-mass WIMP dark matter. The CDEX-TEXONO Collaboration is conducting the first research program at the new China Jinping Underground Laboratory with this approach. The status and plans of the laboratory and the experiment are discussed.
GEMINI: The First Underground Testbed for Seismic Isolation and Interplatform Control in Next-Generation Gravitational-Wave Detectors
Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI)（格兰萨索科学研究所）；INFN - Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS)（意大利国家核物理研究所-格兰萨索国家实验室）；University of Hamburg（汉堡大学）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）
One of the most powerful techniques for direct detection of dark matter via elastic scattering of galactic WIMPs is the use of liquid argon time projection chambers. Atmospheric argon (AAr) has a naturally occurring radioactive isotope, \ar{}, of cosmogenic origin. The use of argon extracted from underground wells, deprived of \ar{}, is key to the physics potential of these experiments. The DarkSide-20k (DS-20k) dark matter search experiment will operate with 50 tonnes of radio-pure underground argon (UAr), extracted from the Urania plant in Cortez (USA) and purified in the Aria distillation p…
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory is a multipurpose neutrino experiment designed to determine neutrino mass hierarchy and precisely measure oscillation parameters by detecting reactor neutrinos from the Yangjiang and Taishan Nuclear Power Plants, observe supernova neutrinos, study the atmospheric, solar neutrinos and geo-neutrinos, and perform exotic searches, with a 20-thousand-ton liquid scintillator detector of unprecedented 3\% energy resolution (at 1 MeV) at 700-meter deep underground. In this proceeding, the subsystems of the experiment, including the cental detector, the onl…
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a 20ktons multi-purpose underground liquid scintillator detector, was proposed with the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy as a primary physics goal. Due to low background requirement of the experiment, a multi-veto system ,which consists of a water Cherenkov detector and a top tracker detector, is required. In order to keep the water quality good and remove the radon in the water, a ultra-pure water system, a radon removal system and radon concentration measurement system have been designed. In this paper, the radon removal equip…
The relevant interaction energies for astrophysical radiative capture reactions are very low, much below the repulsive Coulomb barrier. This leads to low cross sections, low counting rates in $γ$-ray detectors, and therefore the need to perform such experiments at ion accelerators placed in underground settings, shielded from cosmic rays. Here, the feasibility of such experiments in the new shallow-underground accelerator laboratory in tunnels VIII and IX of the Felsenkeller site in Dresden, Germany, is evaluated. To this end, the no-beam background in three different types of germanium detect…
The VIP2 experiment tests the Pauli Exclusion Principle with high sensitivity, by searching for Pauli-forbidden atomic transitions from the 2p to the 1s shell in copper at about 8keV. The transition energy of Pauli-forbidden K X-rays is shifted by about 300 eV with respect to the normal allowed K line. This energy difference can be resolved using Silicon Drift Detectors. The data for this experiment is taken in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS), which provides shielding from cosmic radiation. An overview of the detection system of the VIP2 experiment will be given. This includes the…
Radon background is one of the most critical influences on the ultra-low background and rare-event physical experiments in underground laboratories. To conduct a comprehensive investigation of the radon concentrations in China JinPing underground Laboratory (CJPL), long-term cumulative measurements were carried out using time-integrated passive radon dosimeters containing CR-39 solid-state nuclear track detectors at four sites of CJPL-I. The measurements lasted from May 30,2015 to March 16,2016, a total of 290 days, and the total effective measurement time is 6,953 hours. In the main experimen…
The COBRA collaboration operates a demonstrator setup at the underground facility LNGS (Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, located in Italy) to prove the technological capabilities of this concept for the search for neutrinoless double beta-decay. The setup consists of 64 $(1\times\!1\times\!1)$ cm$^{3}$ CZT detectors in CPG configuration. One purpose of this demonstrator is to test if reliable long-term operation of CZT-CPG detectors in such a setup is possible. The demonstrator has been operated under ultra low-background conditions since more than three years and collected data correspond…
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a 40-kton underground liquid argon time-projection-chamber (LAr TPC) detector, for long-baseline neutrino oscillation studies and for neutrino astrophysics and nucleon decay searches. Photon detector systems embedded within the LAr TPC add precise timing capabilities for non-beam events. The ProtoDUNE dual phase detector will consist of a 6x6x6 m3 liquid argon time-projection chamber placed at CERN and the light readout will be formed by 8-inch cryogenic photomultipliers from Hamamatsu. The characterization of the 36 photomultipliers, the base…
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a project to design, construct and operate a next-generation long-baseline neutrino detector with a liquid argon (LAr) target capable also of searching for proton decay and supernova neutrinos. It is a merger of previous efforts of the LBNE and LBNO collaborations, as well as other interested parties to pursue a broad programme with a staged 40 kt LAr detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) 1300 km from Fermilab. This programme includes studies of neutrino oscillations with a powerful neutrino beam from Fermilab, as well a…
Optimization and Underground Implementation of the KAPAE Phase II Detector for an Invisible New Particle Search in Positronium Decay
The Center for High Energy Physics, Kyungpook National University（韩国庆北国立大学高能物理中心）；Advanced Radiation Technology Insititute, Korea Atomic Energy Research Insititute（韩国原子能研究所先进辐射技术研究所）；Department of Physics, Kyungpook National University（韩国庆北国立大学物理系）；Center for Underground Physics, Institute for Basic Science（韩国基础科学研究院地下物理中心）；Central Research Institute, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd.（韩国水力核电有限公司中央研究院）；State Key Laboratory of Functional Crystals and Devices, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海硅酸盐研究所功能晶体及器件国家重点实验室）
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose neutrino experiment designed to measure the neutrino mass hierarchy using a central detector (CD), which contains 20 kton liquid scintillator (LS) surrounded by about 18,000 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), located 700~m underground. The rate of cosmic muons reaching the JUNO detector is about 3~Hz and the muon induced neutrons and isotopes are major backgrounds for the neutrino detection. Reconstruction of the muon trajectory in the detector is crucial for the study and rejection of those backgrounds. This paper will introdu…
An upgraded version of the OGRAN -- combined optical-acoustic gravitational wave detector -- has been investigated in a long-term operation mode. This installation, located at the Baksan Neutrino Observatory (BNO) INR RAS, is designed to work under the program for detecting collapsing stars in parallel with the neutrino detector: Baksan Underground Scintillation Telescope (BUST). Such joint search corresponds to the modern trend for a development of "multi-messenger astronomy". In this work the effects of thermal relaxation OGRAN are experimentally investigated using passive and active thermal…
Gravitational wave detectors like the Einstein Telescope will be built a few hundred meters under Earth's surface to reduce both direct seismic and Newtonian noise. Underground facilities must be designed to take full advantage of the shielding properties of the rock mass to maximize the detector's performance. A major issue with the Einstein Telescope design are the corner points, where caverns need to be excavated in stable, low permeability rock to host the sensitive measurement infrastructure. This paper proposes a new topology that moves the top stages of the seismic attenuation chains an…
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multipurpose neutrino-oscillation experiment designed to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy and to precisely measure oscillation parameters by detecting reactor antineutrinos, observe supernova neutrinos, study the atmospheric, solar neutrinos and geo-neutrinos, and perform exotic searches, with a 20 kiloton liquid scintillator detector of unprecedented $3\%$ energy resolution (at 1 MeV) at 700-meter deep underground and to have other rich scientific possibilities. Currently MC study shows a sensitivity of the mass hierarchy to be $\…
This article reports the characterization of two High Purity Germanium detectors performed by extracting and comparing their efficiencies using experimental data and Monte Carlo simulations. The efficiencies were calculated for pointlike $γ$-ray sources as well as for extended calibration sources. Characteristics of the detectors such as energy linearity, energy resolution, and full energy peak efficiencies are reported from measurements performed on surface laboratories. The detectors will be deployed in a $γ$-ray assay facility that will be located in the first underground laboratory in Mexi…
Large liquid argon TPC detector programs such as LBNE and LAGUNA-LBNO will be able to make measurements of the proton lifetime which will outperform Cherenkov detectors in the proton decay channel $p \rightarrow K^{+}ν$. At the large depths which are proposed for such experiments, a non-negligible source of isolated charged kaons may be produced in the showers of cosmogenic muons. We present an estimate of the cosmogenic muon background to proton decay in the $p \rightarrow K^{+}ν$ channel. The simulation of muon transport to a depth of 4 km w.e, is performed in the MUSIC framework and the pro…
The next generation of low-background physics experiments will require the use of materials with unprecedented radio-purity. A gamma-counting facility at the Kimballton Underground Research Facility (KURF) has been commissioned to perform initial screening of materials for radioactivity primarily from nuclides in the 238U and 232Th decay chains, 40K and cosmic-ray induced isotopes. The facility consists of two commercial low-background high purity germanium (HPGe) detectors. A continuum background reduction better than a factor of 10 was achieved by going underground. This paper describes the …
An infrastructure to characterize germanium detectors has been designed and constructed at the HADES Underground Research Laboratory, located in Mol (Belgium). Thanks to the 223m overburden of clay and sand, the muon flux is lowered by four orders of magnitude. This natural shield minimizes the exposure of radio-pure germanium material to cosmic radiation resulting in a significant suppression of cosmogenic activation in the germanium detectors. The project has been strongly motivated by a special production of germanium detectors for the GERDA experiment. GERDA, currently collecting data at t…
The Argon Dark Matter (ArDM) experiment consists of a liquid argon (LAr) time projection chamber (TPC) sensitive to nuclear recoils resulting from scattering of hypothetical Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) on argon targets. With an active target of 850 kg, ArDM represents an important milestone in the quest for Dark Matter with LAr. We present the experimental apparatus currently installed underground at the Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc (LSC), Spain. We show first data recorded during a single-phase commissioning run in 2015 (ArDM Run I), which overall confirm the good and …
Detecting dark matter directly using sensitive underground detectors is one of the most promising ways to address the question of what is dark matter. The next generation underground experiments will search for dark matter in two directions. One is to use larger target mass detectors to further probe smaller cross sections in the WIMP parameter space and the other is to probe lower mass dark matter which requires new technologies with extremely low threshold. Once dark matter is detected, experiments with directional sensitivities and experiments with longer exposure and larger target masses a…
We present a measurement of the rate of correlated neutron captures in the WATCHBOY detector, deployed at a depth of approximately 390 meters water equivalent (m.w.e.) in the Kimballton Underground Research Facility (KURF). WATCHBOY consists of a cylindrical 2 ton water target doped with 0.1% gadolinium, surrounded by a 40 ton undoped water hermetic shield. We present a comparison of our results with the expected rate of correlated neutron captures arising from high-energy neutrons incident on the outside of the WATCHBOY shield, predicted by a hybrid FLUKA/GEANT4-based simulation. The incident…
It is known that neutron background is a big problem for low-background experiments in underground Laboratories. Our global net of en-detectors sensitive to thermal neutrons includes the detectors running both on the surface and at different depths underground. We present here results obtained with the en-detector of 0.75 m^2 which is running more than 3 years in underground room at a depth of 25 m of water equivalent in Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow. Spontaneous increases in thermal neutron flux up to a factor of 3 were observed in delayed anti-correlation with barometric pr…
The Boulby Underground Germanium Suite (BUGS) comprises three low background, high-purity germanium detectors operating in the Boulby Underground Laboratory, located 1.1 km underground in the north-east of England, UK. BUGS utilises three types of detector to facilitate a high-sensitivity, high-throughput radioassay programme to support the development of rare-event search experiments. A Broad Energy Germanium (BEGe) detector delivers sensitivity to low-energy gamma-rays such as those emitted by 210Pb and 234Th. A Small Anode Germanium (SAGe) well-type detector is employed for efficient screen…
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a dual-site experiment for long-baseline neutrino oscillation studies and for neutrino astrophysics and nucleon decay searches. The Far Detector of DUNE will consist of four 10 kt liquid argon time-projection-chambers (LAr TPC) placed in the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) at 1300 km distance from the neutrino beam at Fermilab. The underground location of the Far Detector, at 4300 m.w.e. depth, is essential to be able to study rare and low-energy processes. DUNE will have a unique sensitivity to the electron neutrino flavor compon…
Neutrons produced by cosmic muon interactions are important contributors to backgrounds in underground detectors when searching for rare events. Typically such neutrons can dominate the background, as they are particularly difficult to shield and detect. Since actual data is sparse and not well documented, simulation studies must be used to design shields and predict background rates. Thus validation of any simulation code is necessary to assure reliable results. This work compares in detail the predictions of the FLUKA simulation code to existing data, and uses this code to report a simulatio…
The COBRA demonstrator, a prototype for a large-scale experiment searching for neutrinoless double beta-decay, was built at the underground laboratory Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy. It consists of an array of 64 monolithic, calorimetric CdZnTe semiconductor detectors with a coplanar-grid design and a total mass of 380g. It is used to investigate the experimental challenges faced when operating CdZnTe detectors in low-background mode, to identify potential background sources and to show the long-term stability of the detectors. The first data-taking period started in 2011 …
The main background above 3\,MeV for in-beam nuclear astrophysics studies with $γ$-ray detectors is caused by cosmic-ray induced secondaries. The two commonly used suppression methods, active and passive shielding, against this kind of background were formerly considered only as alternatives in nuclear astrophysics experiments. In this work the study of the effects of active shielding against cosmic-ray induced events at a medium deep location is performed. Background spectra were recorded with two actively shielded HPGe detectors. The experiment was located at 148\,m below the surface of the …
Micromegas detectors, thanks to the good spatial and temporal discrimination capabilities, are good candidates for rare event search experiments. Recent X-ray background levels achieved by these detectors in the CAST experiment have motivated further studies in the nature of the background levels measured. In particular, different shielding configurations have been tested at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory, using a microbulk type detector which was previously running at the CAST experiment. The first results underground show that this technology, which is made of low radiative materials, i…
During the last taking data campaigns of the CAST experiment, the micromegas detectors have achieved background levels of $\approx 5 \times 10^{-6}$keV$^{-1}$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ between 2 and 9 keV. This performance has been possible thanks to the introduction of the microbulk technology, the implementation of a shielding and the development of discrimination algorithms. It has motivated new studies towards a deeper understanding of CAST detectors background. One of the working lines includes the construction of a replica of the set-up used in CAST by micromegas detectors and its installation in…
I report on the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL), a new facility to be built in 2016, located 1 km below the surface in western Victoria, Australia. I will discuss the status of the proposed SABRE experiment, which will be comprised of a pair of high purity 50-60 kg NaI crystal detectors with active veto shielding to be located in labs in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres respectively. I also discuss projects beyond SABRE, including directional dark matter detectors, which will be used to determine the origin of any true dark matter signals.
SuperCDMS is currently operating a 10-kg array of cryogenic germanium detectors in the Soudan underground laboratory to search for weakly interacting massive particles, a leading dark matter candidate. These detectors, known as iZIPs, measure ionization and athermal phonons from particle interactions with sensors on both sides of a Ge crystal. The ionization signal can be used to efficiently tag events at high radius and near the top and bottoms surfaces, where diminished charge collection can cause events to mimic WIMP-induced nuclear recoils. Using calibration data taken with a 210Pb source …
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kton liquid scintillator (LS) detector, which is planed to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy and measure the oscillation parameters at the sub-percent level using reactor antineutrino oscillations. As a multipurpose neutrino experiment, JUNO is also capable of measuring supernova burst neutrinos, the diffuse supernova neutrino background, geo-neutrinos, solar neutrinos and atmospheric neutrinos. After a brief introduction to the physics motivation, we discuss the status of the JUNO project, including the design of the detector sy…
DarkSide (DS) at Gran Sasso underground laboratory is a direct dark matter search program based on TPCs with liquid argon from underground sources. The DS-50 TPC, with 50 kg of liquid argon is installed inside active neutron and muon detectors. DS-50 has been taking data since Nov 2013, collecting more than 10^7 events with atmospheric argon. This data represents an exposure to the largest background, beta decays of 39Ar, comparable to the full 3 y run of DS-50 with underground argon. When analysed with a threshold that would give a sensitivity in the full run of about 10^-45 cm2 at a WIMP mas…
