Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW C
Volume 105, Issue 6, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.105.064610
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics [DE-AC02-05CH11231, DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC05-76RL0130, DE-FG02-97ER41020, DE-FG02-97ER41033, DE-FG02-97ER41041, DE-SC0012612, DE-SC0014445, DE-SC0018060, LANLEM77/LANLEM78]
- Particle Astrophysics Program and Nuclear Physics Program of the National Science Foundation [MRI-0923142, PHY-1003399, PHY-1102292, PHY-1206314, PHY-1614611, PHY-1812409, PHY-1812356, PHY-2111140]
- Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) program at Lawrence Berkeley Na-tional Laboratory
- U.S. Department of Energy through the Los Alamos National Laboratory LDRD Program
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory LDRD Program
- South Dakota Board of Regents Competitive Research Grant
- Russian Foundation for Basic Research [15-02-02919]
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [SAPIN-2017-00023]
- Canada Foundation for Innovation John R. Evans Leaders Fund
- Sanford Underground Research Facility
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In this work, the background sources of neutron captures and delayed decays in ultrarare event searches were studied by analyzing the 13C(??, n)16O reactions induced by ?? particles emitted within the calibration sources of the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR. The reaction rate was estimated by observing the 6129-keV ?? rays emitted from the excited 16O states, and the measurements were found to be consistent with predictions by a TALYS-based software.
Neutron captures and delayed decays of reaction products are common sources of backgrounds in ultrarare event searches. In this work, we studied 13C(??, n)16O reactions induced by ?? particles emitted within the calibration sources of the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR. These sources are thorium-based calibration standards enclosed in carbon-rich materials. The reaction rate was estimated by using the 6129-keV ?? rays emitted from the excited 16O states that are populated when the incoming ?? particles exceed the reaction Q value. Thanks to the excellent energy performance of the DEMONSTRATOR???s germanium detectors, these characteristic photons can be clearly observed in the calibration data. Facilitated by GEANT4 simulations, a comparison between the observed 6129-keV photon rates and predictions by a TALYS-based software was performed. The measurements and predictions were found to be consistent, albeit with large statistical uncertainties. This agreement provides support for background projections from (??, n) reactions in future double-beta decay search efforts.
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