International germanium experiment (IGEX)

Conference · Sun May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1988

OSTI ID:6919647

Brodzinski, R L; Liles, C D; Miley, H S; Reeves, J H; Roberts, W L; Szady, A J

Recent advances in isotopic enrichment technology now allow the enrichment of germanium to 85% /sup 76/Ge in kilogram quantities using centrifuge techniques. The content of /sup 70/Ge remaining will be negligibly small and that of /sup 72/Ge will be reduced significantly. Recently completed experiments in ultralow-radioactivity-background techniques indicate that the dominant background remaining in the PNL/USC germanium spectrometer is due to /sup 65/Zn, /sup 68/Ge, and /sup 56,58/Co formed in reactions of cosmic-ray-generated fast neutrons on /sup 70/Ge. The combination of isotopic enrichment and low-background fabrication technology should result in an improvement of two orders of magnitude over today's best efforts in searches for neutrinoless double-beta decay of /sup 76/Ge. An international collaboration is being formed to build and operate a multi-kilogram enriched /sup 76/Ge detector, housed in ultralow-background cryostats and shielding components, and located in an underground laboratory. 12 refs., 2 figs.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest Lab., Richland, WA (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC06-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 6919647
• Report Number(s): PNL-SA-16018; CONF-880173-6; ON: DE88014761
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

651620* -- Nuclear Properties & Reactions
A=59-89
Experimental
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
BETA DECAY
BETA-MINUS DECAY
DECAY
DETECTION
DOUBLE BETA DECAY
ENRICHMENT
EVEN-EVEN NUCLEI
GE SEMICONDUCTOR DETECTORS
GERMANIUM 76
GERMANIUM ISOTOPES
INTERMEDIATE MASS NUCLEI
ISOTOPES
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
NEUTRINO OSCILLATION
NUCLEI
RADIATION DETECTORS
SEMICONDUCTOR DETECTORS
STABLE ISOTOPES