Scintillating crystal detectors offer potential advantages in low-energy low-background experiments for particle physics and astrophysics. The GSO crystal is an interesting detector to explore for future neutrino physics experiments. The contributions to background due to the various channels of intrinsic radio-isotopes from the 232 Th and 238 U series are identified and studied with time-correlation analysis and detailed fits to the spectral shape. Good agreement is achieved between measured and simulated spectra, indicating background suppression factors to the 10 −2 − 10 −3 level are possible. The procedures can be adopted for background understanding and suppression in other low-count-rate experiments where the dominant source of background is from internal radioactivity. Based on 1656 hours of data taking, limits on the double beta decay half-life for the various channels in 160 Gd are derived. The limits for the neutrinoless and the Majoron modes are > 3.0(1.9) × 10 19 y, respectively, at 68(90)% confidence level.

Crystal scintillators provide potential merits for the pursuit of low-energy low-background experiments. A CsI(Tl) scintillating crystal detector is being constructed to study lowenergy neutrino physics at a nuclear reactor, while projects are underway to adopt this technique for dark matter searches. The choice of the geometrical parameters of the crys-