Michael Wigard

Characterization of the XENON1T liquid xenon dual-phase time projection chamber using Kr-83m(pdf)

The XENON1T experiment aims to detect the interactions of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and xenon nuclei. It uses the largest liquid xenon dual-phase time projection chamber in the world. To understand the properties of this detector calibration measurements with sources of known energy are needed. Due to the large size of the detector, external sources are insufficient for this purpose. Kr-83m is an ideal calibration source because it has a short half-life of 1.83 hours and can be introduced into the detector without remaining as a lasting source of background. Yet, the half-life is long enough to achieve a homogeneous event distribution within the detector. Due to the fact that Kr-83m decays via a short-lived intermediate state, virtually background free measurements can be achieved by looking for temporal coincidences. This talk presents several detector properties and how they can be investigated using Kr-83m, with a focus on light- and charge-yield stability.