Cosmogenic-neutron activation of TeO2 and implications for neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments

Understand

Flux-averaged cross sections for cosmogenic-neutron activation of natural tellurium were measured using a neutron beam containing neutrons of kinetic energies up to $\sim$800 MeV, and having an energy spectrum similar to that of cosmic-ray neutrons at sea-level.

• Analysis of the radioisotopes produced reveals that 110mAg will be a dominant contributor to the cosmogenic-activation background in experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay of 130Te, such as CUORE and SNO+.
• An estimate of the cosmogenic-activation background in the CUORE experiment has been obtained using the results of this measurement and cross-section measurements of proton activation of tellurium.
• Additionally, the measured cross sections in this work are also compared with results from semi-empirical cross-section calculations.