Optical response of highly reflective film used in the water Cherenkov muon veto of the XENON1T dark matter experiment

• Published in: Journal of instrumentation Vol. 12; no. 6; p. P06017
• Main Authors: Geis, Ch, Grignon, C., Oberlack, U., García, D. Ramírez, Weitzel, Q.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 26.06.2017
• Subjects: Computer simulation; Dark matter; Efficiency; Elastic scattering; Fluorescence; Foils; Luminous intensity; Monte Carlo simulation; Muons; Nucleons; Quantum efficiency; Reflectance; Rotational spectra; Scattering cross sections; Sensitivity; Weakly interacting massive particles; Xenon
• ISSN: 1748-0221; 1748-0221
• DOI: 10.1088/1748-0221/12/06/P06017

The XENON1T experiment is the most recent stage of the XENON Dark Matter Search, aiming for the direct detection of dark matter candidates, such as the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The projected sensitivity for the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering cross-section is σ≈2×10−47cm2 for a WIMP mass of mχ=50GeV/c2. To reach its projected sensitivity, the background has to be reduced by two orders of magnitude compared to its predecessor XENON100. This requires a water Cherenkov muon veto surrounding the XENON1T TPC, both to shield external backgrounds and to tag muon-induced energetic neutrons through detection of a passing muon or the secondary shower induced by a muon interacting in the surrounding rock. The muon veto is instrumented with 84 8'' PMTs with high quantum efficiency (QE) in the Cherenkov regime and the walls of the watertank are clad with the highly reflective DF2000MA foil by 3M. Here, we present a study of the reflective properties of this foil, as well as the measurement of its wavelength shifting (WLS) properties. Furthermore, we present the impact of reflectance and WLS on the detection efficiency of the muon veto, through the use of a Monte Carlo simulation carried out with the Geant4 toolkit. The measurements yield a specular reflectance of ≈100% for wavelengths larger than 400nm, while ≈90% of the incoming light below 370nm is absorbed by the foil. Approximately 3–7.5% of the light hitting the foil within the wavelength range 250nm≤λ≤390nm is used for the WLS process. The intensity of the emission spectrum of the WLS light is slightly dependent on the absorbed wavelength and shows the shape of a rotational-vibrational fluorescence spectrum, peaking at around λ≈420nm. Adjusting the reflectance values to the measured ones in the Monte Carlo simulation originally used for the muon veto design, the veto detection efficiency remains unchanged. Including the wavelength shifting in the Monte Carlo simulation leads to an increase of the efficiency of approximately 0.5%.