https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09759-5
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Improving radioactive contaminant identification through the analysis of delayed coincidences with an 
-spectrometer
1
INFN-Sezione di Milano Bicocca, 20126, Milan, Italy
2
Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Ambiente e della Terra, Università di Milano-Bicocca, 20126, Milan, Italy
3
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano-Bicocca, 20126, Milan, Italy
4
INFN-Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, 67100, Assergi, L’Aquila, Italy
5
Physics Department, University of California, 94720, Berkeley, CA, USA
e
massimiliano.nastasi@unimib.it
Received:
10
May
2021
Accepted:
19
October
2021
Published online:
5
November
2021
In the framework of rare event searches, the identification of radioactive contaminants in ultra-pure samples is a challenging task, because the signal is often at the same level of the instrumental background. This is a rather common situation for -spectrometers and other detectors used for low-activity measurements. In order to obtain the target sensitivity without extending the data taking live-time, analysis strategies that highlight the presence of the signal sought should be developed. In this paper, we show how to improve the contaminant tagging capability relying on the time-correlation of radioactive decay sequences. We validate the proposed technique by measuring the impurity level of both contaminated and ultra-pure copper samples, demonstrating the potential of this analysis tool in disentangling different background sources and providing an effective way to mitigate their impact in rare event searches.
© The Author(s) 2021
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Funded by SCOAP3
