Neutrinoless double beta decay experiments try to establish whether neutrinos are their own antiparticles by searching for an ultra-rare radioactive process. A discovery would have major implications for particle physics and cosmology, but requires tonne-scale detectors with backgrounds below 1 count per tonne per year. This poses a formidable technical challenge that has prompted a diverse and dynamic worldwide experimental effort.
The NEXT Collaboration uses a high pressure xenon gas time projection chamber with electroluminescent amplification, which offers excellent energy resolution, particle tracking for background suppression and scalability to large source masses.
In this presentation, we present a complete characterisation of several wavelength-shifting fibres that will be used in a future fibre-barrel light detection system, as well as a graph-based machine learning model for event classification. These two contributions will help to improve the energy resolution and background rejection in future NEXT detectors.
StudentSeminar