Intrinsic backgrounds from Rn and Kr in the XENON100 experiment

Understand

In this paper, we describe the XENON100 data analyses used to assess the target-intrinsic background sources radon ($^{222}$Rn), thoron ($^{220}$Rn) and krypton ($^{85}$Kr).

• We detail the event selections of high-energy alpha particles and decay-specific delayed coincidences.
• We derive distributions of the individual radionuclides inside the detector and quantify their abundances during the main three science runs of the experiment over a period of $\sim$ 4 years, from January 2010 to January 2014.
• We compare our results to external measurements of radon emanation and krypton concentrations where we find good agreement.