2024/05/20 by N. Byrnes, NEXT Collaboration, Byrnes, N. +211 · 1 citation
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #Inorganic Fluorides and Related Compounds #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2406.15422
openalex publication_date 2024/05/20 · openalex created_date 2024/06/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The imaging of individual Ba2+ ions in high pressure xenon gas is one possible way to attain background-free sensitivity to neutrinoless double beta decay and hence establish the Majorana nature of the neutrino. In this paper we demonstrate selective single Ba2+ ion imaging inside a high-pressure xenon gas environment. Ba2+ ions chelated with molecular chemosensors are resolved at the gas-solid interface using a diffraction-limited imaging system with scan area of 1×1~cm2 located inside 10~bar of xenon gas. This new form of microscopy represents an important enabling step in the development of barium tagging for neutrinoless double beta decay searches in 136Xe, as well as a new tool for studying the photophysics of fluorescent molecules and chemosensors at the solid-gas interface.