Speaker
Description
The LEGEND Collaboration is searching for neutrinoless double beta ($0\nu\beta\beta$) decay in Germanium-76 ($^{76}$Ge) via a phased approach. The first of two phases, LEGEND-200 (L200), is currently under construction at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy and will use 200 kg of enriched High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detectors submerged in a liquid argon active shield in order to target a half life sensitivity of 10$^{27}$ years and a background index of < $2·10^{−4}$ cts/(keV·kg·yr). Brand new Inverted Coaxial Point Contact (ICPC) HPGe detectors will be utilised in L200 and their unique geometry provide the advantage of superior energy resolution and strong pulse shape discrimination power whilst having large detector mass. These detectors must be comprehensively characterised before their deployment at LNGS in order to verify their performance and behaviour, including the important task of energy resolution evaluation at the Q-value for $0\nu\beta\beta$ decay in $^{76}$Ge of 2039 keV. This characterisation process is currently being performed in the underground laboratories of HADES in Belgium and SURF in the US. This talk will focus on the characterisation activities of LEGEND at HADES, with a particular emphasis on the active volume determination of ICPC detectors. Active volume determination is a crucial characterisation task required for $0\nu\beta\beta$ analyses directly affecting the measured half-life sensitivity.
