Installation of a muon veto for low background gamma spectroscopy at the LBNL low-background facility

Abstract

An active veto system consisting of plastic scintillation panels was installed outside the Pb shielding of a 115% n-type HPGe detector in an effort to reduce background continuum generated by cosmic ray muons on the surface. The Low Background Facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory performs low level assay (generally of primordial U, Th, K) of candidate construction materials for experiments that require a high level of radiopurity. The counting is performed in two facilities: one local surface site and a remote underground site of approximately 600m.w.e. For the recently installed veto system at the surface location, the top scintillator panel has been in use for nearly 1year and the full 3π anticoincidence shield was commissioned into normal counting operations in January 2013. The integrated background from 20 to 3600keV is reduced overall by a factor of 8, where most of the energy spectrum above 100keV achieves an overall reduction that varies from 8 to 10. A dramatic improvement of peak-to-background across the entire continuum is observed, greatly enhancing low-level peaks that would otherwise be obscured.