Development of RF Carpet for Ion Transport in Gases

Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) is a hypothetical process which if detected would be the rarest decay process ever observed. In this process, two neutrons in a nucleus simultaneously beta decay without producing any antineutrinos. Its detection would prove the neutrino to be a Majorana fermion. The long half-life of this decay > 10²⁶ years require development of efficient background suppression and signal identification methodologies. The NEXT collaboration is searching for this decay using a gaseous xenon time projection chamber enriched in xenon-136, and employs topological reconstruction and excellent energy resolution (1% FWHM) to reduce background levels towards 1 count/year in the signal region. The use of xenon detectors also offer a further opportunity: the implementation of single barium daughter ion tagging, an approach that may reduce radiogenic and cosmogenic backgrounds by orders of magnitude and unlock sensitivities that extend beyond the inverted neutrino mass ordering. In such experiments, efficient capture and identification of single barium ions is crucial. In this talk I will present recent advances in the development of RF carpet for ion collection and extraction from a ton to multi-ton scale volume of high pressure gas.