Using 220Rn to calibrate liquid noble gas detectors

In this paper, we describe 220Rn calibration source that was developed for liquid noble gas detectors. The key advantage of this source is that it can provide 212Bi-212 Po consecutive events, which enables us to evaluate the vertex resolution of a detector at low energy by comparing low-energy events of 212Bi and corresponding higher-energy α-rays from 212Po. Since 220Rn is a noble gas, a hot metal getter can be used when introduced using xenon as the carrier gas. In addition, no long-life radioactive isotopes are left behind in the detector after the calibration is complete; this has clear advantage over the use of 222Rn which leaves longlife radioactivity, i.e., 210Pb. Using a small liquid xenon test chamber, we developed a system to introduce 220Rn via the xenon carrier gas; we demonstrated the successful introduction of 6 × 102 220Rn atoms in our test environment.