Reimund Bayerlein Erlangen

Development of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) for detection of Liquid Xenon (LXe) VUV-scintillation light in the nEXO experiment(pdf)

The most practical way to test whether the neutrino is its own antiparticle is the search for the neutrinoless double beta decay. Its halftime provides information about the neutrino mass scale. The baseline concept of the currently developed nEXO experiment to detect this decay is a single-phase LXe time projection chamber. In order to fully cover the inverted hierarchy mass range excellent energy resolution is required. SiPMs for scintillation light detection have to provide high photon detection efficiency (PDE) and low radioactive background. In Erlangen we work together with a SiPM manufacturer to develop such devices. An optimised setup of our LXe chamber is needed to minimise systematic inaccuracies of the PDE measurement. I’m currently writing a simulation of the chamber to investigate reflections, surface models and ideal radioactive source position. In this contribution I will briefly present the nEXO experiment and our LXe set up.