Testing the Ge detectors for the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR

TL;DR

This paper characterizes high purity germanium detectors for the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR, focusing on their performance metrics and simulation methods to optimize neutrinoless double beta decay detection.

Contribution

It provides detailed measurements of HPGe crystal properties and introduces a simulation package for detector characterization, enhancing understanding of detector performance.

Findings

Measured energy resolution, efficiency, and uniformity of HPGe crystals.

Developed a simulation framework for detector characterization.

Demonstrated data-simulation comparison to extract additional detector information.

Abstract

High purity germanium (HPGe) crystals will be used for the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR, where they serve as both the source and the detector for neutrinoless double beta decay. It is crucial for the experiment to understand the performance of the HPGe crystals. A variety of crystal properties are being investigated, including basic properties such as energy resolution, efficiency, uniformity, capacitance, leakage current and crystal axis orientation, as well as more sophisticated properties, e.g. pulse shapes and dead layer and transition layer distributions. In this paper, we will present our measurements that characterize the HPGe crystals. We will also discuss our simulation package for the detector characterization setup, and show that additional information can be extracted from data-simulation comparisons.