Development of a Method for Liquid Xenon Purification Using a Cryogenic Centrifugal Pump

Abstract

We are developing a new type of photon detector for an experiment to search for muons decaying into a positron and a gamma ray. In this experiment, the photon detector will utilize liquid xenon (Xe) as the scintillation material. Good transparency of the liquid Xe is required in order to gain the highest performance out of the detector. Impurities like water and oxygen must be removed efficiently for this purpose. We have developed a new purification system, dedicated to removing water from liquid Xe, by employing a cryogenic centrifugal pump and molecular sieves. The performance of the system will be described in this article.