A LN$_2$ Based Cooling System for a Next Generation Liquid Xenon Dark Matter Detector

TL;DR

This paper proposes a reliable LN$_2$-based cooling system for large-scale liquid xenon dark matter detectors, enabling remote and long-term operation suitable for future 50-ton detectors, demonstrated through laboratory testing.

Contribution

Introduces a novel LN$_2$ cooling method with a cold finger and temperature regulation for next-generation large LXe detectors, compatible with existing systems and capable of remote operation.

Findings

System effectively cooled a small LXe detector in laboratory tests.

Cooling method is simple, reliable, and suitable for long-term operation.

Can be integrated into existing cooling infrastructure like the PandaX experiments.

Abstract

In recent years cooling technology for Liquid Xenon (LXe) detectors has advanced driven by the development of Dark Matter (DM) detectors with target mass in the 100 - 1,000 kg range. The next generation of DM detectors based on LXe will be in the 50,000 kg (50 t) range requiring more than 1 kW of cooling power. Most of the prior cooling methods become impractical at this level. For cooling a 50 t scale LXe detector, a method is proposed in which Liquid Nitrogen (LN$_2$) in a small local reservoir cools the xenon gas via a cold finger. The cold finger incorporates a heating unit to provide temperature regulation. The proposed cooling method is simple, reliable, and suitable for the required long-term operation for a rare event search. The device can be easily integrated into present cooling systems, e.g. the 'Cooling Bus' employed for the PandaX I and II experiments. It is still possible to cool indirectly with no part of the cooling or temperature control system getting in direct contact with the clean xenon in the detector. Also the cooling device can be mounted at a large distance, i.e. the detector is cooled remotely from a distance of 5 - 10 m. The method was tested in a laboratory setup at Columbia University to carry out different measurements with a small LXe detector and behaved exactly as predicted.