0000000000736293
AUTHOR
T. H. V. T. Dias
NEXT-100 Technical Design Report (TDR). Executive summary
[EN] In this Technical Design Report (TDR) we describe the NEXT-100 detector that will search for neutrinoless double beta decay (ßß0v) in 136XE at the Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc (LSC), in Spain. The document formalizes the design presented in our Conceptual Design Report (CDR): an electroluminescence time projection chamber, with separate readout planes for calorimetry and tracking, located, respectively, behind cathode and anode. The detector is designed to hold a maximum of about 150 kg of xenon at 15 bar, or 100 kg at 10 bar. This option builds in the capability to increase the total isotope mass by 50% while keeping the operating pressure at a manageable level. The readout pla…
Initial results of NEXT-DEMO, a large-scale prototype of the NEXT-100 experiment
NEXT-DEMO is a large-scale prototype of the NEXT-100 detector, an electroluminescent time projection chamber that will search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of Xe-136 using 100-150 kg of enriched xenon gas. NEXT-DEMO was built to prove the expected performance of NEXT-100, namely, energy resolution better than 1% FWHM at 2.5MeV and event topological reconstruction. In this paper we describe the prototype and its initial results. A resolution of 1.75% FWHM at 511 keV (which extrapolates to 0.8% FWHM at 2.5 MeV) was obtained at 10 bar pressure using a gamma-ray calibration source. Also, a basic study of the event topology along the longitudinal coordinate is presented, proving that it…
Characterization of a medium size Xe/TMA TPC instrumented with microbulk Micromegas, using low-energy gamma-rays
NEXT-MM is a general-purpose high pressure (10 bar, $\sim25$ l active volume) Xenon-based TPC, read out in charge mode with an 8 cm $\times$8 cm-segmented 700 cm$^2$ plane (1152 ch) of the latest microbulk-Micromegas technology. It has been recently commissioned at University of Zaragoza as part of the R&D of the NEXT $0\nu\beta\beta$ experiment, although the experiment's first stage is currently being built based on a SiPM/PMT-readout concept relying on electroluminescence. Around 2 million events were collected during the last months, stemming from the low energy $\gamma$-rays emitted by a $^{241}$Am source when interacting with the Xenon gas ($\epsilon$ = 26, 30, 59.5 keV). The localized…