The GENIUS-test -: facility-first results on background from 222Rn daughters

GENIUS-TF (Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 511 (2003) 341; Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 481 (2002) 149.) is a test-facility for the GENIUS project (GENIUS-Proposal, 20 November 1997; Z. Phys. A 359 (1997) 351; CERN Courier, November 1997, 16; J. Phys. G 24 (1998) 483; Z. Phys. A 359 (1997) 361; in: H.V. Klapdor-Kleingrothaus, H. Pas. (Eds.), First International Conference on Particle Physics Beyond the Standard Model, Castle Ringberg, Germany, 8-14 June 1997, IOP Bristol (1998) 485 and in Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 13 (1998) 3953; in: H.V. Klapdor-Kleingrothaus, I.V. Krivosheina (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Particle Physics Beyond the Standard Model BEYOND 99, Castle Ringberg, Germany 6-12 June 1999, IOP Bristol (2000) 915), a proposed large scale underground observatory for rare events which is based on operation of naked germanium detectors in liquid nitrogen for an extreme background reduction. Operation of naked Ge crystals in liquid nitrogen has been applied routinely already for more than 20 years by the CANBERRA Company for technical functions tests (CANBERRA Company, private communication, 5 March 2004.), but it never had found entrance into basic research. Only in 1997 first tests of application of this method for nuclear spectroscopy have been performed, successfully, in Heidelberg (Kiapdor-Kleingrothaus et al., 1997, 1998; J. Hellmig and H.V. Klapdor-Kleingrothaus, 1997). On May 5, 2003 the first four naked high-purity germanium detectors (total mass 10.52 kg) were installed in liquid nitrogen in the GENIUS Test Facility at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory. Since then the experiment has been running continuously, testing for the first time the novel technique in an underground laboratory and for a long-lasting period. In this work, we present the first analysis of the GENIUS-TF background after the completion of the external shielding, which took place in December 2003. We focus especially on the background coming from Rn-222 daughters. This is found to be at present by a factor of 200 higher than expected from simulation. It is still compatible with the scientific goal of GENIUS-TF, namely to search for cold dark matter by the modulation signal, but on the present level would cause serious problems for a full GENIUS-like experiment using liquid nitrogen. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.