An atom trap trace analysis (ATTA) system for measuring ultra-low contamination by krypton in xenon dark matter detectors Tae Hyun Yoon Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 c 2013 Tae Hyun Yoon All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT An atom trap trace analysis (ATTA) system for measuring ultra-low contamination by krypton in xenon dark matter detectors Tae Hyun Yoon The XENON dark matter experiment aims to detect hypothetical weakly interacting mas- sive particles (WIMPs) scattering off nuclei within its liquid xenon (LXe) target. The trace 85Kr in the xenon target undergoes β-decay with a 687 keV end point and 10.8 year half- life, which contributes background events and limits the sensitivity of the experiment. In order to achieve the desired sensitivity, the contamination by krypton is reduced to the part per trillion (ppt) level by cryogenic distillation. The conventional methods are not well suited for measuring the krypton contamination at such a low level. In this work, we have developed an atom trap trace analysis (ATTA) device to detect the ultra-low kryp- ton concentration in the xenon target. This project was proposed to the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) development [Aprile and Zelevinsky, 2009] and is funded by NSF and Columbia University. The ATTA method, originally developed at Argonne National Laboratory, uses standard laser cooling and trapping techniques, and counts single trapped atoms. Since the isotopic abundance of 85Kr in nature is 1.5 10−11, the 85Kr/Xe level is expected to be 10−23, × ∼ which is beyond the capability of our method. Thus we detect the most abundant (57%) isotope 84Kr, and infer the 85Kr contamination from their known abundances. To avoid contamination by krypton, the setup is tested and optimized with 40Ar which has a similar cooling wavelength to 84Kr. Two main challenges in this experiment are to obtain a trapping efficiency high enough to detect krypton impurities at the ppt level, and to achieve the resolution to discriminate single atoms. The device is specially designed and adjusted to meet these challenges. After achieving these criteria with argon gas, we precisely characterize the efficiency of the system using Kr-Xe mixtures with known ratios, and find that 90 minutes are required to trap ∼ one 84Kr atom at the 1-ppt Kr/Xe contamination. This thesis describes the design, construction, and experimental results of the ATTA project at Columbia University. Table of Contents 1 The XENON experiment 1 1.1 Evidenceofdarkmatter . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1 1.1.1 Rotation curves of galaxies . 1 1.1.2 Galaxyclusters.............................. 2 1.1.3 Cosmicmicrowavebackground . 5 1.2 Darkmattersearches.............................. 6 1.2.1 Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) . ...... 6 1.2.2 Detection strategies . 8 1.3 XENONdarkmatterexperiment . 9 1.3.1 Liquid xenon as a WIMP detection medium . 9 1.3.2 Principle of the XENON dark matter experiment . 11 1.3.3 The XENON100 detector . 13 1.4 BackgroundinXENON100 ........................... 15 1.4.1 Backgroundsources ........................... 15 1.4.2 Removal of 85Krfromxenon ...................... 18 2 Atomic properties 22 2.1 Argon ....................................... 22 2.1.1 40Ar.................................... 23 2.2 Krypton...................................... 25 2.2.1 85Kr.................................... 27 2.2.2 84Kr.................................... 30 i 2.3 Xenon ....................................... 30 3 Basic concepts 32 3.1 Lightforcesonatoms .............................. 32 3.2 Opticalmolasses ................................. 35 3.2.1 Principle of optical molasses . 35 3.2.2 The Doppler limit of optical molasses . 37 3.3 Zeemanslowing.................................. 39 3.4 Magneto-opticaltrap.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 41 4 Experimental apparatus 44 4.1 Lasersystem ................................... 45 4.2 Vacuumsystem.................................. 49 4.3 RFdischargesource ............................... 50 4.3.1 Possible excitation methods . 50 4.3.2 RFdischargeresonator ......................... 52 4.4 Transverse cooling of the atomic beam . ..... 54 4.5 Zeemanatomslower ............................... 57 4.5.1 Design................................... 57 4.5.2 Construction ............................... 64 4.5.3 Fieldmeasurements ........................... 65 4.6 Magneto-opticaltrap.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 68 4.7 Lasershutter ................................... 73 5 Cooling and trapping 76 5.1 Sourcecooling................................... 76 5.2 CCDcameracalibration . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 79 5.3 Consumptionrateofargon . 81 5.4 Atomicflux .................................... 82 5.5 Magneto-optical trap of argon . 85 ii 6 Single atom detection 89 6.1 Avalanchephotodiode . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 89 6.2 Optics....................................... 90 6.3 Backgroundnoise................................. 94 6.3.1 Light intensity locking PID controller . ..... 97 6.3.2 Backgroundfluctuation . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 98 6.4 Singleatomsignal ................................ 101 7 Krypton abundance measurement 106 7.1 Measurement of krypton in argon gas . 107 7.2 Consumptionrateofxenongas . 108 7.3 Sourceefficiencyversuspressure . 109 7.4 Xenon gas with high krypton contamination . 110 7.4.1 Xenonbottle1 .............................. 110 7.4.2 Xenonbottle2 .............................. 112 7.5 Calibration for krypton in xenon studies . ....... 113 7.5.1 PurexenongasfromPraxAir . 115 7.5.2 12ppmkryptonmixture. 115 7.5.3 0.75ppmkryptonmixture. 116 7.5.4 System efficiency for krypton in xenon . 117 7.6 Xenon extraction from the XENON detector . 117 8 Conclusion 119 Bibliography 120 iii List of Figures 1.1 Measured rotation curve of the NGC 6503 galaxy. ....... 2 1.2 GalaxyclusterAbell370. 3 1.3 Composite images of the matter in galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 (bullet cluster) andMACSJ0025.4-1222. ............................ 4 1.4 The cosmic microwave background (CMB) from 15.5 months of Planck data. 5 1.5 The angular power spectrum of temperature fluctuations measured by Planck. 6 1.6 The co-moving number density Y and the resulting thermal relic density of a 100 GeV dark matter particle as a function of temperature T and time t. 7 1.7 Scintillation mechanism in LXe and different processes that can lead to the quenching of scintillation light. 11 1.8 Operation principle of the dual-phase XENON100 detector. ......... 12 1.9 Schematic of the XENON100 dark matter detector. ....... 14 1.10 Results on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering cross section from XENON100..................................... 15 1.11 Schematic of the XENON100 purification system and image of the gas panel. 16 1.12 Cryogenic distillation column used to separate krypton. ........... 17 1.13 Differential scattering rates of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and decay rates of 85Kr.............................. 19 1.14 Cryogenic distillation column used to separate krypton. ........... 20 2.1 Grotriandiagramofargon. 24 2.2 Grotriandiagramofkrypton. 28 2.3 Global accumulated 85Kr inventory and the annual emissions. 29 iv 3.1 Magnitude of the scattering force exerted on an atom via atom-photon inter- action........................................ 35 3.2 Schematic of atom-photon interaction for an atom moving toward the light source........................................ 36 3.3 Optical molasses force as a function of atom velocity along the axis of light propagation..................................... 37 3.4 Diagram of the energy level according to atom velocity and magnetic field in aZeemanslower. ................................. 40 3.5 Schematic of three dimensional magneto-optical trap (MOT) ........ 42 4.1 Schematic of the atom trap trace analysis (ATTA) system. .......... 44 4.2 Photo of the atom trap trace analysis (ATTA) system at Columbia University. 45 4.3 Schematic of a Littman-Metcalf external cavity diode laser (ECDL) . 46 4.4 Schematicofthelasersystem.. 47 4.5 Schematicofthevacuumsystem. 50 4.6 Excitation schemes for 84Kratom. ....................... 51 4.7 Cross section of the RF discharge source. ...... 52 4.8 Image of the helical coil RF resonator. ...... 53 4.9 Glowing plasma discharge of argon and xenon gas by a helical coil resonator. 54 4.10 Schematic of the first transverse cooling setup. .......... 55 4.11 First-stage transverse cooling efficiency as a function of the laser intensity. 56 4.12 Relevant energy levels when external field B is applied, and relative transition 3 3 strengths for P2 and D3 states. ........................ 58 4.13 Design field for the Zeeman slower with a 310 MHz red detuned laser. 59 4.14 Velocity trajectories in the Zeeman slower. .......... 61 4.15 Transverse divergence for the highest captured velocity groups of krypton andargon...................................... 63 4.16 A square copper tube was welded for water cooling. ........ 64 4.17 Measurement of the Zeeman slower field in the longitudinal direction. 66 4.18 Velocity trajectory of Kr evaluated based on the measured Zeeman slower field. 67 4.19 Atom trajectories in the one dimensional magneto-optical trap (MOT). 68 v 4.20 Winding the magneto-optical trap (MOT) coil and MOT field measurement. 69 4.21 Magneto-optical trap (MOT) field and its derivative in the z-direction. 70 4.22 Magneto-optical trap (MOT) field and its derivative in the x-direction. 71 4.23 Chamber and