@article{293d57a8a67b45b4bd1285b40a297a67,
title = "Removing krypton from xenon by cryogenic distillation to the ppq level",
abstract = "The XENON1T experiment aims for the direct detection of dark matter in a detector filled with 3.3 tons of liquid xenon. In order to achieve the desired sensitivity, the background induced by radioactive decays inside the detector has to be sufficiently low. One major contributor is the β-emitter 85Kr which is present in the xenon. For XENON1T a concentration of natural krypton in xenon natKr/Xe<200ppq (parts per quadrillion, 1ppq=10-15mol/mol) is required. In this work, the design, construction and test of a novel cryogenic distillation column using the common McCabe–Thiele approach is described. The system demonstrated a krypton reduction factor of 6.4 · 10 5 with thermodynamic stability at process speeds above 3 kg/h. The resulting concentration of natKr/Xe<26ppq is the lowest ever achieved, almost one order of magnitude below the requirements for XENON1T and even sufficient for future dark matter experiments using liquid xenon, such as XENONnT and DARWIN.",
author = "{XENON Collaboration} and E. Aprile and J. Aalbers and F. Agostini and M. Alfonsi and Amaro, {F. D.} and M. Anthony and F. Arneodo and P. Barrow and L. Baudis and B. Bauermeister and Benabderrahmane, {M. L.} and T. Berger and Breur, {P. A.} and A. Brown and E. Brown and S. Bruenner and G. Bruno and R. Budnik and L. B{\"u}tikofer and J. Calv{\'e}n and Cardoso, {J. M.R.} and M. Cervantes and D. Cichon and D. Coderre and Colijn, {A. P.} and J. Conrad and Cussonneau, {J. P.} and Decowski, {M. P.} and Perio, {P. de} and Gangi, {P. Di} and Giovanni, {A. Di} and S. Diglio and E. Duchovni and G. Eurin and J. Fei and Ferella, {A. D.} and A. Fieguth and D. Franco and W. Fulgione and {Gallo Rosso}, A. and M. Galloway and F. Gao and M. Garbini and C. Geis and Goetzke, {L. W.} and L. Grandi and Z. Greene and C. Grignon and C. Hasterok and E. Hogenbirk",
note = "Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation, Swiss National Science Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Max Planck Gesellschaft, German Ministry for Education and Research, Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter, Weizmann Institute of Science, I-CORE, Initial Training Network Invisibles (Marie Curie Actions, PITNGA-2011-289442), Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Region des Pays de la Loire, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Kavli Foundation, and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. We are grateful to Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso for hosting and supporting the XENON project. The Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics supported S.R. and travel for I.C. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017, The Author(s).",
year = "2017",
month = may,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4757-1",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "77",
journal = "European Physical Journal C",
issn = "1434-6044",
publisher = "Springer New York",
number = "5",
}