Speaker
Ben Jones
(University of Texas at Arlington)
Description
Detection of a single Ba2+ ion in many tons of xenon is a formidable technological challenge. The difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that Ba2+, the expected final state in double beta decay of gaseous 136Xe, has no visible-accessible optical transitions to use for atomic fluorescence spectroscopy. To overcome this challenge, the NEXT collaboration is developing a method of tagging individual barium ions using bespoke organic molecules that undergo fluorescence enhancement when chelating barium ions. In this talk I will describe the current state of the art and ongoing R&D toward realization of this technology, which may enable very-low-background, ultra-large 0nubb detectors.
Primary author
Ben Jones
(University of Texas at Arlington)
