Cosmogenic Production as a Background in Searching for Rare Physics Processes D.-M. Mei a , Z.-B. Yin a,b,c,1, S. R. Elliott d aDepartment of Physics, The University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota 57069 bInstitute of Particle Physics, Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China cKey Laboratory of Quark & Lepton Physics (Huazhong Normal University), Ministry of Education, China dLos Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 Abstract We revisit calculations of the cosmogenic production rates for several long-lived iso- topes that are potential sources of background in searching for rare physics processes such as the detection of dark matter and neutrinoless double-beta decay. Using up- dated cosmic-ray neutron flux measurements, we use TALYS 1.0 to investigate the cosmogenic activation of stable isotopes of several detector targets and find that the cosmogenic isotopes produced inside the target materials and cryostat can result in large backgrounds for dark matter searches and neutrinoless double-beta decay. We use previously published low-background HPGe data to constrain the production of 3H on the surface and the upper limit is consistent with our calculation. We note that cosmogenic production of several isotopes in various targets can generate po- arXiv:0903.2273v1 [nucl-ex] 12 Mar 2009 tential backgrounds for dark matter detection and neutrinoless double-beta decay with a massive detector, thus great care should be taken to limit and/or deal with the cosmogenic activation of the targets. Key words: Cosmogenic activation, Dark matter detection, Double-beta decay PACS: 13.85.Tp, 23.40-s, 25.40.Sc, 28.41.Qb, 95.35.+d, 29.40.Wk Email address:
[email protected] (D.-M.