Event reconstruction in a liquid xenon Time Projection Chamber with an optically-open field cage

T Stiegler,K Deslandes,R Maclellan,I Ostrovskiy,G St-Hilaire,R Krücken,A Piepke,J Farine,A Iverson,S Rescia,A Kuchenkov,H Rasiwala,Y Zhou,K Odgers,J Dalmasson,S Thibado,A Der Mesrobian-Kabakian,M Walent,R Devoe,D Fairbank,F Nolet,E Caden,T Tsang,A De St Croix,S Al Kharusi,M Heffner,M Medina-Peregrina,M Oriunno,P Nakarmi,O Nusair,J Todd,B Mong,M Worcester,M Richman,D Goeldi,A Pocar,K Skarpaas,F Vachon,T Rossignol,L Yang,N Massacret,R Gornea,G Gallina,A Craycraft,M Elbeltagi,S Feyzbakhsh,J Hößl,I Badhrees,A Karelin,J Echevers,B Chana,C Licciardi,S Viel,M Tarka,U Wichoski,M Wagenpfeil,R Saldanha,Z Ning,F Edaltafar,L Darroch,Carlos Vivo-Vilches ,B T Cleveland ,C.T Overman,W M Fairbank ,V Radeka,K Murray,T Koffas,N Roy,M L Di Vacri ,K Ni,Ying Ding ,G S Ortega ,L Fabris,J L Vuilleumier ,P A Breur ,X S Jiang ,G Visser,A Tidball,David C Moore ,P S Barbeau ,Guowei Li ,Q Wang,I J Arnquist ,E W Hoppe ,Xilei Sun ,M J Dolinski ,A Odian,J.‐F Pratte ,S Li,E Brown,Wei Wu ,Claire Chambers ,Thilo Michel ,A E Bolotnikov ,G Gratta,P Gautam,L J Kaufman ,F Retière,S Sangiorgio,D Beck,V Belov,Serge A Charlebois ,Thomas Mcelroy ,Trilochan Bhatta ,V Stekhanov,J Dilling,T Ziegler,Sen Wu ,J Brodsky ,C R Natzke ,E V Hansen ,M Hughes,A Jamil,Samuel Parent ,T Wager,Е Raguzin ,Wenlu Wei ,K G Leach ,T I Totev ,D S Leonard ,A K Soma ,T Brunner,M J Jewell ,Y Lan,Yang Hong-Jun ,Jianzhou Zhao ,Xiaomeng Wu ,V Veeraraghavan,Silvia Ferrara ,Minor J Coon ,A C Larson ,A Dragone,J L Orrell ,Liqiang Cao ,L Wen ,T Daniels,Krishna Kumar ,P C Rowson ,O Zeldovich,B G Lenardo ,Gisela Anton ,Z Li,O Njoya,A Robinson,A House,G F Cao ,J Newby ,M Chiu,Pin Lv ,R Tsang,Qi Xia ,G Giacomini

doi:10.1016/j.nima.2021.165239

Abstract

nEXO is a proposed tonne-scale neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) experiment using liquid 136Xe (LXe) in a Time Projection Chamber (TPC) to read out ionization and scintillation signals. Between the field cage and the LXe vessel, a layer of LXe (“skin” LXe) is present, where no ionization signal is collected. Only scintillation photons are detected, owing to the lack of optical barrier around the field cage. In this work, we show that the light originating in the skin LXe region can be used to improve background discrimination by 5% over previous published estimates. This improvement comes from two elements. First, a fraction of the γ-ray background is removed by identifying light from interactions with an energy deposition in the skin LXe. Second, background from 222Rn dissolved in the skin LXe can be efficiently rejected by tagging the α decay in the 214Bi-214Po chain in the skin LXe.

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