Radioactive contamination of scintillators

Danevich, F.A.; Tretyak, V. I.

doi:10.1142/s0217751x18430078

Cited by 21 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 279 publications

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“…In inorganic scintillators, the presence of natural radionuclides from 232 Th, 238 U and 235 U families and 40 K, and other cosmogenic and/or anthropogenic radionuclides is common. Some materials contain elements with radioactive isotopes, like 113 Cd in CdWO 4 , 138 La in LaCl 3 and LaBr 3 , and so on [15].…”

Section: Radiopurity Of Crystal Scintillatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The presence of a wide range [15] of radioactive nuclides has been explored in inorganic crystal scintillators. When made for low-background purposes, like NaI(Tl), CaF 2 (Eu), CsI(Tl), ZnWO 4 , CdWO 4 , and Li 2 MoO 4 , they can have standard contaminants in the range 0.01-1 mBq/kg.…”

Section: Radiopurity Of Crystal Scintillatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, all the operations on the bare crystals require selected and controlled environment and procedures, in order to avoid possible surface pollution (see, e.g., Refs. [15,16]).…”

Section: Radiopurity Of Crystal Scintillatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Future Role of Inorganic Crystal Scintillators in Dark Matter Investigations

et al. 2021

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Crystal scintillators and in particular inorganic scintillators play an important role in the investigation of Dark Matter (DM) and other rare processes. The investigation of a DM signature, as the annual modulation, or the directionality technique requires the use of highly radiopure detectors able to explore the very low energy region maintaining a high stability of the running conditions. In this paper, the cases of NaI(Tl), ZnWO4 and SrI2(Eu) crystal scintillators are described in the framework of our activities at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of the INFN. Their role, the obtained results in DM investigation, as well as their potential and perspectives for the future are reviewed.

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Section: Radiopurity Of Crystal Scintillatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Radiopurity Of Crystal Scintillatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Future Role of Inorganic Crystal Scintillators in Dark Matter Investigations

et al. 2021

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“…The discrimination of α + recoils (decay to the ground state) and α + recoils + γ(conversion electrons) (decay to the excited level) events would be a challenge for such a kind of experiments because of the small energy of the excited level, and the typically rather poor energy resolution in the light channel of scintillating bolometers. In fact, possible detectors for such experiments are CaWO 4 , ZnWO 4 , CdWO 4 ; in particular, ZnWO 4 and CdWO 4 scintillators have the advantage of very high level of radio-purity [118]; but they have only modest energy resolution for alpha particles because of the anisotropy of their scintillation response [112,119] which is a disadvantage for an accurate particle discrimination. The CaWO 4 scintillator, despite typically with higher radioactive contamination [118], might provide the best energy resolution of all tungstate scintillators for α particles [115].…”

Section: W and Other W Nuclidesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental searches for rare alpha and beta decays

et al. 2019

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The current status of the experimental searches for rare alpha and beta decays is reviewed. Several interesting observations of alpha and beta decays, previously unseen due to their large half-lives (10 15 − 10 20 yr), have been achieved during the last years thanks to the improvements in the experimental techniques and to the underground locations of experiments that allows to suppress backgrounds. In particular, the list includes first observations of alpha decays of 151 Eu, 180 W (both to the ground state of the daughter nuclei), 190 Pt (to excited state of the daughter nucleus), 209 Bi (to the ground and excited states of the daughter nucleus). The isotope 209 Bi has the longest known half-life of T 1/2 ≈ 10 19 yr relatively to alpha decay. The beta decay of 115 In to the first excited state of 115 Sn (Eexc = 497.334 keV), recently observed for the first time, has the Q β value of only (147 ± 10) eV, which is the lowest Q β value known to-date. Searches and investigations of other rare alpha and beta decays ( 48 Ca, 50 V, 96 Zr, 113 Cd, 123 Te, 178m2 Hf, 180m Ta and others) are also discussed.

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“…Crystal scintillators are widely utilized in particle physics, in particular, for search for 2β decay, dark matter (DM) particles, and the study of rare nuclear decays (alpha, beta, cluster decays, etc. ); see [39] and references therein. The sensitivity of the 2β decay experiment depends on the following values [40,41]:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enriched Crystal Scintillators for 2β Experiments

Polischuk

2021

Physics

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The investigation of 2β decay is an important issue in modern physics, allowing the test of the Standard Model of elementary particles and the study of the nature and properties of neutrinos. The crystal scintillators, especially made of isotopically-enriched materials, are powerful detectors for 2β decay experiments thanks to the high radiopurity level and the possibility to realize the calorimetric “source = detector” approach with a high detection efficiency. For the moment, the 2ν2β processes have been observed at the level of 1019–1024 years with enriched crystals; the sensitivity to the 0ν mode have reached the level of 1024–1026 years in some decay channels for different nuclides allowing one to calculate the upper limits on the effective mass of the Majorana neutrino at the level of 0.1–0.6 eV. The paper is intended to be a review on the latest results to investigate 2β processes with crystal scintillators enriched in 48Ca, 106Cd, and 116Cd.

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Radioactive contamination of scintillators

Cited by 21 publications

References 279 publications

The Future Role of Inorganic Crystal Scintillators in Dark Matter Investigations

The Future Role of Inorganic Crystal Scintillators in Dark Matter Investigations

Experimental searches for rare alpha and beta decays

Enriched Crystal Scintillators for 2β Experiments

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