Development of 100Mo-containing scintillating bolometers for a high-sensitivity neutrinoless double-beta decay search

E. Armengaud (1) , C. Augier (2) , A.S. Barabash (3) , J.W. Beeman (4) , T.B. Bekker (5) , F. Bellini (6) , A. Benoît (7) , L. Bergé (8) , T. Bergmann (9) , J. Billard (2) , R.S. Boiko (10) , A. Broniatowski (8) , V. Brudanin (11) , P. Camus (12) , S. Capelli (13) , L. Cardani (14) , N. Casali (14) , A. Cazes (2) , M. Chapellier (8) , F. Charlieux (2) , D.M. Chernyak (15) , M. de Combarieu (1) , N. Coron (16) , F.A. Danevich (15) , I. Dafinei (14) , M. de Jesus (2) , L. Devoyon (1) , S. Di Domizio (17) , L. Dumoulin (8) , K. Eitel (9) , C. Enss (18) , F. Ferroni (6) , A. Fleischmann (18) , N. Foerster (9) , J. Gascon (2) , L. Gastaldo (18) , L. Gironi (13) , A. Giuliani (8) , V.D. Grigorieva (19) , M. Gros (1) , L. Hehn (4) , S. Hervé (1) , V. Humbert (8) , N.V. Ivannikova (19) , I.M. Ivanov (19) , Y. Jin (20) , A. Juillard (2) , M. Kleifges (9) , V.V. Kobychev (15) , S.I. Konovalov (3) , F. Koskas (1) , V. Kozlov (9) , H. Kraus (21) , V.A. Kudryavtsev (22) , M. Laubenstein (23) , H. Le Sueur (8) , Martin Loidl (24) , P. Magnier (1) , E.P. Makarov (25) , M. Mancuso (8) , P. de Marcillac (8) , S. Marnieros (8) , C. Marrache-Kikuchi (8) , S. Nagorny (23) , X-F. Navick (1) , M.O. Nikolaichuk (15) , C. Nones (1) , V. Novati (8) , E. Olivieri (8) , L. Pagnanini (23) , P. Pari (1) , L. Pattavina (23) , M. Pavan (13) , B. Paul (1) , Y. Penichot (1) , G. Pessina (13) , G. Piperno (26) , S. Pirro (23) , O. Plantevin (8) , D.V. Poda (8) , E. Queguiner (2) , T. Redon (16) , Matias Rodrigues (24) , S. Rozov (11) , C. Rusconi (23) , V. Sanglard (2) , K. Schäffner (23) , S. Scorza (9) , V.N. Shlegel (25) , B. Siebenborn (9) , O. Strazzer (1) , D. Tcherniakhovski (9) , C. Tomei (14) , V.I. Tretyak (15) , V.I. Umatov (27) , L. Vagneron (2) , Ya.V. Vasiliev (25) , M. Velazquez (28) , M. Vignati (14) , M. Weber (9) , E. Yakushev (11) , A.S. Zolotarova (1)

1 IRFU - Institut de Recherches sur les lois Fondamentales de l'Univers
2 IPNL - Institut de Physique Nucléaire de Lyon
3 Kurchatov NBIC Centre, National Research Centre, Kurchatov Institute
4 LBNL - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [Berkeley]
5 Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy [Novosibirsk]
6 UNIROMA - Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" = Sapienza University [Rome]
7 NEEL - HELFA - Hélium : du fondamental aux applications
8 CSNSM - Centre de Sciences Nucléaires et de Sciences de la Matière
9 KIT - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
10 Kiev Institute for Nuclear Research
11 JINR - Joint Institute for Nuclear Research
12 NEEL - Cryo - Cryogénie
13 UNIMIB - Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca = University of Milano-Bicocca
14 INFN - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare [Sezione di Roma 1]
15 KINR - Kiev Institute for Nuclear Research
16 IAS - Institut d'astrophysique spatiale
17 UniGe - Università degli studi di Genova = University of Genoa
18 Kirchhoff Institute for Physics
19 Uninsubria - Universitá degli Studi dell’Insubria = University of Insubria [Varese]
20 C2N - Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies [Orsay]
21 University of Oxford
22 University of Sheffield [Sheffield]
23 LNGS - Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso
24 LNHB (CEA, LIST) - Laboratoire National Henri Becquerel (CEA, LIST)
25 NIC - Nikolaev Institute of Inorganic Chemistry [Novosibirsk]
26 LNF - Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati = National Laboratory of Frascati
27 National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute”: Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute
28 ICMCB - Institut de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Bordeaux

This paper reports on the development of a technology involving$^{100}\hbox {Mo}$ -enriched scintillating bolometers, compatible with the goals of CUPID, a proposed next-generation bolometric experiment to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay. Large mass ( $\sim 1~\hbox {kg}$ ), high optical quality, radiopure$^{100}\hbox {Mo}$ -containing zinc and lithium molybdate crystals have been produced and used to develop high performance single detector modules based on 0.2–0.4 kg scintillating bolometers. In particular, the energy resolution of the lithium molybdate detectors near the Q-value of the double-beta transition of$^{100}\hbox {Mo}$ (3034 keV) is 4–6 keV FWHM. The rejection of the $\alpha $ -induced dominant background above 2.6 MeV is better than $8\sigma $ . Less than $10~\upmu \hbox {Bq/kg}$ activity of$^{232}\hbox {Th}\, (^{228}\hbox {Th})$ and$^{226}\hbox {Ra}$ in the crystals is ensured by boule recrystallization. The potential of$^{100}\hbox {Mo}$ -enriched scintillating bolometers to perform high sensitivity double-beta decay searches has been demonstrated with only $10~\hbox {kg}\times \hbox {d}$ exposure: the two neutrino double-beta decay half-life of$^{100}\hbox {Mo}$ has been measured with the up-to-date highest accuracy as $T_{1/2}$ = [6.90 ± 0.15(stat.) ± 0.37(syst.)] $\times ~10^{18}~\hbox {years}$ . Both crystallization and detector technologies favor lithium molybdate, which has been selected for the ongoing construction of the CUPID-0/Mo demonstrator, containing several kg of$^{100}\hbox {Mo}$ .

Mots clés: 29.40.Mc; 23.40.-s; Double-beta decay; Scintillating bolometer; Zinc molybdate; Lithium molybdate; Enriched $^{100}$Mo; double-beta decay: (0neutrino); scintillation counter: crystal; quality: optical; bolometer; CUORE; performance; molybdenum: nuclide; molybdenum: oxygen; lithium; zinc; fabrication; S076H2N

Domaines: Instrumentations et Détecteurs [physics.ins-det]; Physique Nucléaire Expérimentale [nucl-ex]

E. Armengaud, C. Augier, A.S. Barabash, J.W. Beeman, T.B. Bekker, et al.. Development of 100Mo-containing scintillating bolometers for a high-sensitivity neutrinoless double-beta decay search. European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields, 2017, 77 (11), pp.785. ⟨10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-5343-2⟩. ⟨hal-01669511⟩