Ionization and scintillation response of high-pressure xenon gas to alpha particles
dc.contributor.author
dc.date.accessioned
2019-09-26T08:28:04Z
dc.date.available
2019-09-26T08:28:04Z
dc.date.issued
2013-05-31
dc.identifier.issn
1748-0221
dc.identifier.uri
dc.description.abstract
High-pressure xenon gas is an attractive detection medium for a variety of applications in fundamental and applied physics. In this paper we study the ionization and scintillation detection properties of xenon gas at 10 bar pressure. For this purpose, we use a source of alpha particles in the NEXT-DEMO time projection chamber, the large scale prototype of the NEXT-100 neutrinoless double beta decay experiment, in three different drift electric field configurations. We measure the ionization electron drift velocity and longitudinal diffusion, and compare our results to expectations based on available electron scattering cross sections on pure xenon. In addition, two types of measurements addressing the connection between the ionization and scintillation yields are performed. On the one hand we observe, for the first time in xenon gas, large event-by-event correlated fluctuations between the ionization and scintillation signals, similar to that already observed in liquid xenon. On the other hand, we study the field dependence of the average scintillation and ionization yields. Both types of measurements may shed light on the mechanism of electron-ion recombination in xenon gas for highly-ionizing particles. Finally, by comparing the response of alpha particles and electrons in NEXT-DEMO, we find no evidence for quenching of the primary scintillation light produced by alpha particles in the xenon gas
dc.description.sponsorship
This work was supported by the following agencies and institutions: the Spanish Ministerio de
Economía y Competitividad under grants CONSOLIDER-Ingenio 2010 CSD2008-0037 (CUP)
and FPA2009-13697-C04-04; the Portuguese FCT and FEDER through the program COMPETE,
projects PTDC/FIS/103860/2008 and PTDC/FIS/112272/2009; and the Director, Office of Science,
Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-
05CH11231. J. Renner (LBNL) acknowledges the support of a US DOE NNSA Stewardship Science
Graduate Fellowship under contract no. DE-FC52-08NA28752
dc.format.mimetype
application/pdf
dc.language.iso
eng
dc.publisher
Institute of Physics (IOP)
dc.relation.isformatof
Versió preprint del document publicat a: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/8/05/P05025
dc.relation.ispartof
© Journal of Instrumentation, 2013, vol. 8, p. P05025
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Articles publicats (D-EMCI)
dc.rights
Tots els drets reservats
dc.subject
dc.title
Ionization and scintillation response of high-pressure xenon gas to alpha particles
dc.type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.rights.accessRights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.type.version
info:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersion
dc.identifier.doi
dc.identifier.idgrec
021449