skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Radon-related backgrounds in the LUX dark matter search

Journal Article · · Physics Procedia
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [5];  [8];  [9];  [9];  [7];  [7];  [1];  [2];  [10];  [4];  [11] more »;  [12];  [5];  [13];  [9];  [14];  [9];  [13];  [15];  [1];  [13];  [4];  [5];  [5];  [9];  [16];  [16];  [6];  [4];  [5];  [1];  [10];  [10];  [9];  [17];  [5];  [7];  [14];  [12];  [14];  [11];  [8];  [8];  [10];  [14];  [9];  [5];  [5];  [1];  [1];  [15];  [1];  [10];  [10];  [6];  [5];  [2];  [14];  [18];  [5];  [3];  [14];  [14];  [9];  [14];  [17];  [19];  [8];  [12];  [14];  [4] « less
  1. Case Western Reserve Univ., Cleveland, OH (United States)
  2. Imperial College London, London (United Kingdom)
  3. South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD (United States)
  4. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  5. Yale Univ., New Haven, CT (United States)
  6. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  7. Univ. of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD (United States)
  8. Univ. of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
  9. Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)
  10. Univ. of Coimbra, Coimbra (Portugal)
  11. Univ. of Edingburg, Edinburg (United Kingdom)
  12. Univ. of Rochester, Rochester, NY (United States)
  13. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  14. Univ. of California, Davis, Davis, CA (United States)
  15. Univ. College London, London (United Kingdom)
  16. Univ. of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  17. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
  18. South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, Lead, SD (United States)
  19. Univ. of Rochester, Rochester, NY (United States); Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

The LUX detector is currently in operation at the Davis Campus at the 4850’ level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, SD to directly search for WIMP dark matter. Knowing the type and rate of backgrounds is critical in a rare, low energy event search, and LUX was designed, constructed, and deployed to mitigate backgrounds, both internal and external. An important internal background are decays of radon and its daughters. These consist of alpha decays, which are easily tagged and are a tracer of certain backgrounds, and beta decays, some of which are not as readily tagged and present a background for the WIMP search. We report on studies of alpha decay and discuss implications for the WIMP search.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
OSTI ID:
1201671
Journal Information:
Physics Procedia, Vol. 61, Issue C; ISSN 1875-3892
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 7 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (4)

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment
  • Akerib, D. S.; Bai, X.; Bedikian, S.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 704 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2012.11.135
journal March 2013
Technical results from the surface run of the LUX dark matter experiment journal May 2013
First Results from the LUX Dark Matter Experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility journal March 2014
Measurement and Analysis of WIMP Detection Backgrounds, and Characteri- zation and Performance of the Large Underground Xenon Dark Matter Search Experiment text January 2014

Cited By (3)

Radon background in liquid xenon detectors journal February 2018
First Results from the DEAP-3600 Dark Matter Search with Argon at SNOLAB journal August 2018
Radon background in liquid xenon detectors text January 2017

Similar Records

Projected WIMP Sensitivity of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Dark Matter Experiment
Journal Article · Fri Feb 16 00:00:00 EST 2018 · TBD · OSTI ID:1201671
Projected WIMP sensitivity of the LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter experiment
Journal Article · Wed Mar 04 00:00:00 EST 2020 · Physical Review D · OSTI ID:1201671
+175 more
The Sanford Underground Research Facility at Homestake
Journal Article · Mon Aug 17 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · AIP Conference Proceedings · OSTI ID:1201671

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
dark matter
liquid noble detectors
xenon
radon
background characterization