Detection of the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) scintillation light produced by liquid noble elements is a central challenge in order to fully exploit the available timing, topological, and calorimetric information in detectors leveraging these media. In this paper, we characterize a novel, windowless amorphous selenium based photodetector with direct sensitivity to VUV light. We present here the manufacturing and experimental setup used to operate this detector at low transport electric fields (2.7-5.2 V/μm) and across a wide range of temperatures (77K-290K). This work shows that the first proof-of-principle device windowless amorphous selenium is robust under cryogenic conditions, responsive to VUV light at cryogenic temperatures, and preserves argon purity. These findings motivate a continued exploration of amorphous selenium devices for simultaneous detection of scintillation light and ionization charge in noble element detectors.
@article{arxiv.2207.11127,
title = {Development of a novel, windowless, amorphous selenium based photodetector for use in liquid noble detectors},
author = {M. Rooks and S. Abbaszadeh and J. Asaadi and M. Febbraro and R. W. Gladen and E. Gramellini and K. Hellier and F. Maria Blaszczyk and A. D. McDonald},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.11127},
year = {2023}
}