2017/06/30 by W.-Z. Wei, W. -Z. Wei, D. -M. Mei +3 · 22 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Chemistry #Cosmic ray #Cosmogenic nuclide #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Electromagnetic shielding #Event (particle physics) #Germanium #Isotope #Muon #Neutrino Physics Research #Neutron #Nuclear physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Radiochemistry #Radionuclide #Silicon #Tonne #nucl-ex #physics.ins-det
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2017.10.007
published in Astroparticle Physics 96, 24-31 (Elsevier BV) · 20 pages, 5 figures, and 12 tables
openalex publication_date 2017/10/20 · arxiv created 2017/10/21 · arxiv updated 2017/11/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We report a comprehensive study of cosmogenic activation of germanium used for tonne-scale rare event search experiments. The germanium exposure to cosmic rays on the Earth's surface are simulated with and without a shielding container using Geant4 for a given cosmic muon, neutron, and proton energy spectrum. The production rates of various radioactive isotopes are obtained for different sources separately. We find that fast neutron induced interactions dominate the production rate of cosmogenic activation. Geant4-based simulation results are compared with the calculation of ACTIVIA and the available experimental data. A reasonable agreement between Geant4 simulations and several experimental data sets is presented. We predict that cosmogenic activation of germanium can set limits to the sensitivity of the next generation of tonne-scale experiments.