Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme
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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 38: Methods in Astroparticle Physics II
T 38.4: Talk
Tuesday, March 17, 2026, 17:00–17:15, KS 00.004
Commissioning of a vacuum-insulated liquid argon purifier for removing trace amounts N2 featuring a novel Li-FAU molecular sieve for LEGEND — •Georgia Pavlidaki1, Christoph Vogl1, Laszlo Papp1, Mario Schwarz1, Grzegorz Zuzel2, and Stefan Schönert1 — 1Department of Physics, TUM School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, 85748 Garching b. München, Germany — 2M. Smoluchowski Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, 30-348, Poland
LEGEND-1000 will search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of 76Ge with up to 1000 kg of enriched high-purity germanium detectors. The detectors are operated bare in liquid argon (LAr) which acts as a coolant, shield, and particle detector. To effectively detect background radiation, LAr has to be kept clean. Impurities such as oxygen, nitrogen or water deteriorate its scintillation properties. A recently identified Li-FAU molecular sieve effectively removes nitrogen from LAr. We construct a LAr purification system featuring Li-FAU and a copper catalyst and report on the current status. The system is able to purify in batch and loop mode, and is vacuum insulated, minimizing LAr losses. The purifier will provide high-purity LAr for a future investigation of the scintillation properties of xenon-doped liquid argon, and offers excellent windows of opportunity to gain operational experience with Li-FAU for LEGEND-1000. We acknowledge support from the DFG under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2094 (ORIGINS) and through the Sonderforschungsbereich SFB 1258. We acknowledge support by the BMFTR Verbundprojekt 05A2023 (LEGEND).
Keywords: LEGEND; Liquid Argon; Purification; Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay; Li-FAU