Characterization of an Ionization Readout Tile for nEXO
Abstract
A new design for the anode of a time projection chamber, consisting of a charge-detecting "tile", is investigated for use in large scale liquid xenon detectors. The tile is produced by depositing 60 orthogonal metal charge-collecting strips, 3~mm wide, on a 10~\si{\cm} 10~\si{\cm} fused-silica wafer. These charge tiles may be employed by large detectors, such as the proposed tonne-scale nEXO experiment to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay. Modular by design, an array of tiles can cover a sizable area. The width of each strip is small compared to the size of the tile, so a Frisch grid is not required. A grid-less, tiled anode design is beneficial for an experiment such as nEXO, where a wire tensioning support structure and Frisch grid might contribute radioactive backgrounds and would have to be designed to accommodate cycling to cryogenic temperatures. The segmented anode also reduces some degeneracies in signal reconstruction that arise in large-area crossed-wire time projection chambers. A prototype tile was tested in a cell containing liquid xenon. Very good agreement is achieved between the measured ionization spectrum of a Bi source and simulations that include the microphysics of recombination in xenon and a detailed modeling of the electrostatic field of the detector. An energy resolution =5.5\% is observed at 570~\si{keV}, comparable to the best intrinsic ionization-only resolution reported in literature for liquid xenon at 936~V/\si{cm}.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1710.05109,
title = {Characterization of an Ionization Readout Tile for nEXO},
author = {nEXO Collaboration and M. Jewell and A. Schubert and W. R. Cen and J. Dalmasson and R. DeVoe and L. Fabris and G. Gratta and A. Jamil and G. Li and A. Odian and M. Patel and A. Pocar and D. Qiu and Q. Wang and L. J. Wen and J. B. Albert and G. Anton and I. J. Arnquist and I. Badhrees and P. Barbeau and D. Beck and V. Belov and F. Bourque and J. P. Brodsky and E. Brown and T. Brunner and A. Burenkov and G. F. Cao and L. Cao and C. Chambers and S. A. Charlebois and M. Chiu and B. Cleveland and M. Coon and A. Craycraft and W. Cree and M. Côté and T. Daniels and S. J. Daugherty and J. Daughhetee and S. Delaquis and A. Der Mesrobian-Kabakian and T. Didberidze and J. Dilling and Y. Y. Ding and M. J. Dolinski and A. Dragone and W. Fairbank and J. Farine and S. Feyzbakhsh and R. Fontaine and D. Fudenberg and G. Giacomini and R. Gornea and E. V. Hansen and D. Harris and M. Hasan and M. Heffner and E. W. Hoppe and A. House and P. Hufschmidt and M. Hughes and J. Hößl and Y. Ito and A. Iverson and X. S. Jiang and S. Johnston and A. Karelin and L. J. Kaufman and T. Koffas and S. Kravitz and R. Krücken and A. Kuchenkov and K. S. Kumar and Y. Lan and D. S. Leonard and S. Li and Z. Li and C. Licciardi and Y. H. Lin and R. MacLellan and T. Michel and B. Mong and D. Moore and K. Murray and R. J. Newby and Z. Ning and O. Njoya and F. Nolet and K. Odgers and M. Oriunno and J. L. Orrell and I. Ostrovskiy and C. T. Overman and G. S. Ortega and S. Parent and A. Piepke and J. -F. Pratte and V. Radeka and E. Raguzin and T. Rao and S. Rescia and F. Retiere and A. Robinson and T. Rossignol and P. C. Rowson and N. Roy and R. Saldanha and S. Sangiorgio and S. Schmidt and J. Schneider and D. Sinclair and K. Skarpaas and A. K. Soma and G. St-Hilaire and V. Stekhanov and T. Stiegler and X. L. Sun and M. Tarka and J. Todd and T. Tolba and R. Tsang and T. Tsang and F. Vachon and V. Veeraraghavan and G. Visser and J. -L. Vuilleumier and M. Wagenpfeil and M. Weber and W. Wei and U. Wichoski and G. Wrede and S. X. Wu and W. H. Wu and Z. Xuan and L. Yang and D. Yayun and Y. -R. Yen and O. Zeldovich and X. Zhang and J. Zhao and N. Zhe and Y. Zhou and T. Ziegler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.05109},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
18 pages, 13 figures, as published