학술논문
Simulation and background characterisation of the SABRE South experiment
Document Type
Working Paper
Author
Barberio, E.; Baroncelli, T.; Bignell, L. J.; Bolognino, I.; Brooks, G.; Dastgiri, F.; D'Imperio, G.; Di Giacinto, A.; Duffy, A. R.; Froehlich, M.; Fu, G.; Gerathy, M. S. M.; Hill, G. C.; Krishnan, S.; Lane, G. J.; Lawrence, G.; Leaver, K. T.; Mahmood, I.; Mariani, A.; McGee, P.; McKie, L. J.; McNamara, P. C.; Mews, M.; Melbourne, W. J. D.; Milana, G.; Milligan, L. J.; Mould, J.; Nuti, F.; Pettinacci, V.; Scutti, F.; Slavkovská, Z.; Spinks, N. J.; Stanley, O.; Stuchbery, A. E.; Taylor, G. N.; Tomei, C.; Urquijo, P.; Vignoli, C.; Williams, A. G.; Zhong, Y. Y.; Zurowski, M. J.
Source
Subject
Language
Abstract
SABRE (Sodium iodide with Active Background REjection) is a direct detection dark matter experiment based on arrays of radio-pure NaI(Tl) crystals. The experiment aims at achieving an ultra-low background rate and its primary goal is to confirm or refute the results from the DAMA/LIBRA experiment. The SABRE Proof-of-Principle phase was carried out in 2020-2021 at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS), in Italy. The next phase consists of two full-scale experiments: SABRE South at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, in Australia, and SABRE North at LNGS. This paper focuses on SABRE South and presents a detailed simulation of the detector, which is used to characterise the background for dark matter searches including DAMA/LIBRA-like modulation. We estimate an overall background of 0.72 cpd/kg/keV$_{ee}$ in the energy range 1$-$6 keV$_{ee}$ primarily due to radioactive contamination in the crystals. Given this level of background and considering that the SABRE South has a target mass of 50 kg, we expect to exclude (confirm) DAMA/LIBRA modulation at $4~(5)\sigma$ within 2.5 years of data taking.