Lithium-drifted silicon [Si(Li)] has been used for decades as an ionizing radiation detector in nuclear, particle, and astrophysical experiments, though such detectors have frequently been limited to small sizes (few cm2) and cryogenic operating temperatures. The 10-cm-diameter Si(Li) detectors developed for the General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) balloon-borne dark matter experiment are novel particularly for their requirements of low cost, large sensitive area (~10 m2 for the full 1440-detector array), high temperatures (near -40∘C), and energy resolution below 4 keV FWHM for 20--100-keV x-rays. Previous works have discussed the manufacturing, passivation, and small-scale testing of prototype GAPS Si(Li) detectors. Here we show for the first time the results from detailed characterization of over 1100 flight detectors, illustrating the consistent intrinsic low-noise performance of a large sample of GAPS detectors. This work demonstrates the feasibility of large-area and low-cost Si(Li) detector arrays for next-generation astrophysics and nuclear physics applications.
@article{arxiv.2305.00283,
title = {Large-scale detector testing for the GAPS Si(Li) Tracker},
author = {Mengjiao Xiao and Achim Stoessl and Brandon Roach and Cory Gerrity and Ian Bouche and Gabriel Bridges and Philip von Doetinchem and Charles J. Hailey and Derik Kraych and Anika Katt and Michael Law and Alexander Lowell and Evan Martinez and Kerstin Perez and Maggie Reed and Chelsea Rodriguez and Nathan Saffold and Ceaser Stringfield and Hershel Weiner and Kelsey Yee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.00283},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
Updated to version accepted in IEEE Trans Nucl Sci. Minor changes to text, fixed plotting error on Fig. 5. Conclusions unchanged