Michael Murra Münster

A cryogenic distillation column for the XENON1T experiment(pdf)

The XENON1T experiment is the next generation experiment for the direct detection of dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS). With its 3.3 tons of liquid xenon XENON1T will increase the sensitivity on the WIMP-nucleon cross section down to 2.0 × 10^(−47) cm^2, which is more than one order of magnitude better than the current best limits by LUX and XENON100. A key requirement to reach this sensitivity is the reduction of instrinsic radioactive backgrounds such as Kr-85. Because of the difference in vapor pressure of Kr and Xe both components can be separated by a cryogenic distillation column, which has been constructed and installed at XENON1T. The design and different performance aspects of the distillation facility will be topic of this talk. Different aspects have been funded by DFG-Großgeräte, BMBF and Helmholtz-Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP).