학술논문

Development of Low Background CsI(Tl) Crystals and Search for WIMP
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on. 55(3):1420-1424 Jun, 2008
Subject
Nuclear Engineering
Bioengineering
Crystals
Powders
Pulse shaping methods
Shape
Water resources
Cathodes
Power measurement
Thickness measurement
Minerals
Petroleum
Dark matter
CsI(Tl)
internal background
pulse shape discrimination
WIMP
Language
ISSN
0018-9499
1558-1578
Abstract
The response of CsI(Tl) crystals to nuclear recoils and $\gamma$s down to 3 keV has been studied, and it has been demonstrated that the pulse shape discrimination capability for CsI(Tl) is better than that for NaI(Tl). Extensive study of internal background of CsI powder was performed and a lot of efforts have been made to reduce the internal background sources such as${}^{137}$ Cs and ${}^{87}$Rb. The ${}^{137}$Cs concentration of 2 mBq/kg was achieved successfully in the CsI powder using ultra-pure water for whole extraction process. The Rb concentration was successfully reduced to be less than 1 ppb by the recrystallization method. The CsI(Tl) crystal used for the experiment was grown with the ultra-low background CsI powder and a dimension of the CsI(Tl) crystal is 8 $\,\times\,$8$\,\times\,$ 30 cm$^{3}$ which corresponds to weight of 8.7 kg. The number of photoelectrons is measured to be about 4–6/keV with a RbCs photocathode PMT. The background of CsI(Tl) crystals were measured in the shielding of 30 cm thick mineral oil, 15 cm thick lead, 5 cm thick polyethylene and 10 cm copper at the 700 m minimum depth of underground laboratory at YangYang Pumped Storage Power Plant in Korea. The WIMP search with low background CsI(Tl) crystals has been carried out by the Korean Invisible Mass Search (KIMS) Collaboration and the lower limit on WIMP-nucleon cross section are reported.