English

Liquid argon scintillation response to electronic recoils between $2.8$--$1275~{\rm keV}$ in a high light yield single-phase detector

Instrumentation and Detectors 2020-11-25 v3 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

We measure the liquid argon scintillation response to electronic recoils in the energy range of 2.822.82 to 1274.6 keV1274.6~{\rm keV} at null electric field. The single-phase detector with a large optical coverage used in this measurement yields 12.8±0.3 (11.2±0.3) photoelectron/keV12.8 \pm 0.3 ~ (11.2 \pm 0.3)~{\rm photoelectron/keV} for 511.0511.0-keV{\rm keV} γ\gamma-ray events based on a photomultiplier tube single photoelectron response modeling with a Gaussian plus an additional exponential term (with only a Gaussian term). It is exposed to a variety of calibration sources such as 22Na^{22}{\rm Na} and 241Am^{241}{\rm Am} γ\gamma-ray emitters, and a 252Cf^{252}{\rm Cf} fast neutron emitter that induces quasimonoenergetic γ\gamma rays through a (n,nγ)(n, n'\gamma) reaction with 19F^{19}{\rm F} in polytetrafluoroethylene. In addition, the high light detection efficiency of the detector enables identification of the 2.822.82-keV{\rm keV} peak of 37Ar^{37}{\rm Ar}, a cosmogenic isotope in atmospheric argon. The observed light yield and energy resolution of the detector are obtained by the full-absorption peaks. We find up to approximately 25%25\% shift in the scintillation yield across the energy range and 3%3\% of the energy resolution for the 511.0511.0-keV{\rm keV} line. The Thomas-Imel box model with its constant parameter ς=0.0330.008+0.012\varsigma=0.033 ^{+0.012} _{-0.008} is found to explain the result. For liquid argon, this is the first measurement on the energy-dependent scintillation yield down to a few keV{\rm keV} at null field and provides essential inputs for tuning the argon response model to be used for physics experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.14248,
  title  = {Liquid argon scintillation response to electronic recoils between $2.8$--$1275~{\rm keV}$ in a high light yield single-phase detector},
  author = {M. Kimura and K. Aoyama and M. Tanaka and K. Yorita},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.14248},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

11 pages, 13 figures