Gaseous forms of 76Ge, 82Se, 96Zr, 100Mo, 124Sn, and 130Te: new avenues to future 0ββ time projection chambers
Abstract
Searches for neutrinoless double beta decay are growing larger, with tonne-scale targets in several nuclides still far from exhausting the discovery space. What's beyond ton scale? Time projection chambers (TPCs) are one option for building large (100~T or kiloton-scale) instruments, but filling them with the familiar 136Xe for a 0ββ search is a problem: xenon is a scarce element whose atmospheric-extraction supply chain is small and hard to grow. If future 0ββ searches wish to exploit TPCs' known hardware scalability, we need to fill them with non-xenon target materials. Of particular value would be a TPC that can drift electrons, rather than ions, letting us use mature readout schemes which require gas gain. In this paper, we identify a set of previously-unappreciated, affordable gases which are likely to be electropositive, allowing electron drift and gain in gas-phase TPCs sensitive to 0ββ with the help of track-topology background rejection. We identify candidate 76Ge, 82Se, 96Zr, 100Mo, 124Sn, and 130Te compounds suitable for gas-phase electron-drift TPCs; some may be suitable for liquid-phase TPCs as well. Using a figure-of-merit that emphasizes the need for track topology for background rejection, we argue that 100~T and kiloton-scale gas TPCs are realistic without unprecedented underground infrastructure.
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