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arXiv · 1808.05307

Treatment of material radioassay measurements in projecting sensitivity for low-background experiments

R. H. M. Tsang·I. J. Arnquist·E. W. Hoppe·J. L. Orrell·R. Saldanha
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Abstract

By analyzing sensitivity projections as a statisical estimation problem, we evaluated different ways of treating radioassay measurement results (values and upper limits) when projecting sensitivity for low-background experiments. We developed a figure of merit that incorporates a notion of conservativeness to quantitatively explore the consequences of attempts to bias sensitivity projections, and proposed a method to report sensitivity.

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R. H. M. Tsang, I. J. Arnquist, E. W. Hoppe, J. L. Orrell, R. Saldanha. 2018-08-15. Treatment of material radioassay measurements in projecting sensitivity for low-background experiments. https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.05307

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