The miniaturized proportional counter HD-2(Fe)/(Si) for the GALLEX solar neutrino experiment

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Abstract

The miniaturized proportional counters used for the detection of 71Ge in the solar neutrino project GALLEX are characterized. We also report on the construction techniques applied to build these counters and to achieve the described performance. A very low counting background is achieved by, among other things, careful selection of the materials used for construction. The total 71Ge detection efficiency after applying cuts to reduce the background is about 66%.

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