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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 105: Suche nach Dunkler Materie 1
T 105.7: Vortrag
Montag, 4. März 2013, 12:35–12:50, HSZ-103
Studies of muon-induced neutrons as background for direct Dark Matter searches — •Holger Kluck and Valentin Kozlov — Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Institut für Kernphysik, Postfach 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe
Ambient and muon-induced neutrons constitute a prominent background for Direct Dark Matter search experiments, since neutrons lead to nuclear recoils and thus can mimic a Dark Matter signal. Edelweiss is a Ge-bolometer experiment searching for WIMP dark matter. It is located in the underground laboratory, Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (LSM, France). The collaboration performs monitoring of the thermal neutron flux with 3He detectors and has measured muon-induced neutrons by means of the neutron counter based on Gd-loaded liquid scintillator. Studies of muon-induced neutrons will be the main focus of the presentation and include development of the appropriate MC model based on GEANT4 and analysis of a 1000-days measurement compaign. We find a good agreement between measured rates of muon-induced neutrons and those predicted by the developed model with full event topology. The impact of the neutron background on current Edelweiss data-taking as well as for next generation experiments such as EURECA will be discussed.
This work is supported in part by the German ministry of science and education (BMBF Verbundforschung ATP Proj.-Nr. 05A11VK2), by the Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Phyics (HAP) funded by the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant No. 07-02-00355-a).