College of Arts & Sciences

Othon T. Tzamtzis

College of Arts & Sciences Physics

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Michelle Dolinski Physics

Erin Hansen Co-Mentor

Noise Reduction Analysis for a Liquid Xenon Purity Monitor

Neutrinos are subatomic particles with tiny masses that rarely react with ordinary matter. Nevertheless, liquid xenon can be used to search for a process known as neutrinoless double beta decay, a rare decay during which a nucleus simultaneously emits two electrons without the corresponding electron antineutrinos expected by traditional beta decay (0νββ). The detection of this hypothetical process could give physicists insight into the properties of neutrinos - specifically the relationship between neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts. With this information, physicists will then be able to apply this knowledge to other fields in particle physics and cosmology research.

Drexel University participates in an international collaboration to develop the next generation of this experiment, nEXO. Due to the large scale of nEXO, the survivability of signal electrons is of paramount importance; a novel liquid xenon purity monitor is in development at Yale University and is currently taking data. My work focused on understanding the purity monitor response and building a framework for an automated process of analyzing data pulses. I developed methods of filtering out the persistent noise in the signal while maintaining pulse shape information critical for the purity monitor measurements. This will help in deriving sensitive measurements of the purity of the liquid xenon.