2022 journal article

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Experimental study of C-13(?, n)O-16 reactions in the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR calibration data

PHYSICAL REVIEW C, 105(6).

By: I. Arnquist ^*, F. Avignone^*, A. Barabash^*, C. Barton ^*, K. Bhimani^*, E. Blalock ⁿ, B. Bos^*, M. Busch^* ...and 49 other authors, including 1 NC State author, M. Buuck ^*, T. Caldwell^*, Y. Chan^*, C. Christofferson^*, P. Chu ^*, M. Clark ^*, C. Cuesta ^*, J. Detwiler ^*, Y. Efremenko^*, H. Ejiri^*, S. Elliott ^*, G. Giovanetti^*, M. Green ⁿ , J. Gruszko ^*, I. Guinn ^*, V. Guiseppe ^*, C. Haufe^*, R. Henning^*, D. Aguilar ^*, E. Hoppe ^*, A. Hostiuc^*, M. Kidd ^*, I. Kim ^*, R. Kouzes ^*, T. Lannen^*, A. Li ^*, A. Lopez^*, J. Lopez-Castano ^*, E. Martin ^*, R. Martin ^*, R. Massarczyk ^*, S. Meijer^*, T. Oli ^*, G. Othman^*, L. Paudel^*, W. Pettus ^*, A. Poon ^*, D. Radford ^*, A. Reine^*, K. Rielage ^*, N. Ruof ^*, D. Tedeschi ^*, R. Varner ^*, S. Vasilyev^*, J. Wilkerson ^*, C. Wiseman ^*, W. Xu ^*, C. Yu ^*, B. Zhu ^*(hide authors)

10.1103/PhysRevC.105.064610

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open access via arxiv.org (repository)

Source: Web Of Science

Added: July 11, 2022

Neutron captures and delayed decays of reaction products are common sources of backgrounds in ultra-rare event searches. In this work, we studied 13 C( α, n ) 16 O reactions induced by α -particles emitted within the calibration sources of the Majorana Demonstrator . These sources are thorium-based calibration standards enclosed in carbon-rich materials. The reaction rate was estimated by using the 6129-keV γ -rays emitted from the excited 16 O states that are populated when the incoming α -particles exceed the reaction Q-value. Thanks to the excellent energy performance of the Demonstrator ’s germanium detectors, these characteristic photons can be clearly observed in the calibration data. Facilitated by Geant4 simulations, a comparison between the observed 6129-keV photon rates and predictions by a TALYS-based software was performed. The measurements and predictions were found to be consistent, albeit with large statistical uncertainties. This agreement provides support for background projections from ( α, n )-reactions in future double-beta decay search efforts.