An apparatus to manipulate and identify individual Ba ions from bulk liquid Xe

2014/07/31 by K. Twelker, S. Kravitz, M. Montero Díez +90 · 21 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced NMR Techniques and Applications #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Ion #Materials science #Neutrino Physics Research #Physics #Xenon #physics.ins-det

paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.4895646

published in Review of Scientific Instruments 85(9), 095114 (American Institute of Physics) · 12 pages, 13 figures

openalex publication_date 2014/09/01 · arxiv created 2017/03/22 · arxiv updated 2017/03/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

We describe a system to transport and identify barium ions produced in liquid xenon, as part of R&D towards the second phase of a double beta decay experiment, nEXO. The goal is to identify the Ba ion resulting from an extremely rare nuclear decay of the isotope (136)Xe, hence providing a confirmation of the occurrence of the decay. This is achieved through Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (RIS). In the test setup described here, Ba ions can be produced in liquid xenon or vacuum and collected on a clean substrate. This substrate is then removed to an analysis chamber under vacuum, where laser-induced thermal desorption and RIS are used with time-of-flight mass spectroscopy for positive identification of the barium decay product.

Citations

• Search for Majorana neutrinos with the first two years of EXO-200 data
• Effects of Configuration Interaction on Intensities and Phase Shifts

Cited by

• Search for neutrinoless double beta decay
• Sensitivity and discovery potential of the proposed nEXO experiment to neutrinoless double-β decay