21–24 Sept 2026
The Guildhall, York
Europe/London timezone

Towards Low-Level Tritium Background Quantification

22 Sept 2026, 19:13
1m
Merchant Adventurers Hall

Merchant Adventurers Hall

The Hall, Fossgate, York YO1 9XD

Speaker

Stephanie Lyons (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Description

Tritium is a naturally occurring radioisotope in the environment due to both cosmogenic activation and the modern nuclear fuel cycle. It also remains a problematic background contribution for dark matter and solar neutrino experiments. With a Q$_{\beta}$ value of 18.6 keV, it overlaps with the WIMP search and pp and $^7$Be neutrino search regions of interest. Additionally, tritium is a problematic surface contaminate due to its absorption onto metal and plastic surfaces. Despite these issues, tritium is hard to detect and independently measure at levels relevant to rare-event physics searches. To improve the tritium detection threshold for environmental and rare-event measurements, an electrolytic enrichment capability is being created that can be used to enable ultra-low level tritium quantification. A discussion of how the enrichment can improve current detection capabilities will be presented.

Author

Stephanie Lyons (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Co-authors

Dhruba Deka (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) Henrietta Dulai (University of Hawaii at Manoa) Kylie Alfaro (University of Hawaii at Manoa) Olivia Schmitt (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Presentation materials

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