Radio Frequency and DC High Voltage Breakdown of High Pressure Helium, Argon, and Xenon
Abstract
Motivated by the possibility of guiding daughter ions from double beta decay events to single-ion sensors for barium tagging, the NEXT collaboration is developing a program of R&D to test radio frequency (RF) carpets for ion transport in high pressure xenon gas. This would require carpet functionality in regimes at higher pressures than have been previously reported, implying correspondingly larger electrode voltages than in existing systems. This mode of operation appears plausible for contemporary RF-carpet geometries due to the higher predicted breakdown strength of high pressure xenon relative to low pressure helium, the working medium in most existing RF carpet devices. In this paper we present the first measurements of the high voltage dielectric strength of xenon gas at high pressure and at the relevant RF frequencies for ion transport (in the 10 MHz range), as well as new DC and RF measurements of the dielectric strengths of high pressure argon and helium gases at small gap sizes. We find breakdown voltages that are compatible with stable RF carpet operation given the gas, pressure, voltage, materials and geometry of interest.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1909.05860,
title = {Radio Frequency and DC High Voltage Breakdown of High Pressure Helium, Argon, and Xenon},
author = {K. Woodruff and J. Baeza-Rubio and D. Huerta and B. J. P. Jones and A. D. McDonald and L. Norman and D. R. Nygren and C. Adams and V. Álvarez and L. Arazi and I. J. Arnquist and C. D. R Azevedo and K. Bailey and F. Ballester and J. M. Benlloch-Rodríguez and F. I. G. M. Borges and N. K. Byrnes and S. Cárcel and J. V. Carrión and S. Cebrián and E. Church and C. A. N. Conde and T. Contreras and A. A. Denisenko and G. Díaz and J. Díaz and M. Diesburg and J. Escada and R. Esteve and R. Felkai and A. F. M. Fernandes and L. M. P. Fernandes and P. Ferrario and A. L. Ferreira and F. W. Foss and E. D. C. Freitas and J. Generowicz and A. Goldschmidt and D. González-Díaz and J. J. Gómez-Cadenas and S. Ghosh and R. Guenette and R. M. Gutiérrez and J. Haefner and K. Hafidi and J. Hauptman and C. A. O. Henriques and J. A. Hernando Morata and P. Herrero and V. Herrero and S. Johnston and M. Kekic and L. Labarga and A. Laing and P. Lebrun and N. López-March and M. Losada and R. D. P. Mano and J. Martín-Albo and A. Martínez and G. Martínez-Lema and F. Monrabal and C. M. B. Monteiro and F. J. Mora and J. Muñoz Vidal and P. Novella and B. Palmeiro and A. Para and J. Pérez and M. Querol and J. Renner and J. Repond and S. Riordan and L. Ripoll and Y. Rodriguez Garcia and J. Rodríguez and L. Rogers and B. Romeo and C. Romo-Luque and F. P. Santos and J. M. F. dos Santos and A. Simón and C. Sofka and M. Sorel and T. Stiegler and P. Thapa and J. F. Toledo and J. Torrent and A. Usón and J. F. C. A. Veloso and R. Webb and R. Weiss-Babai and J. T. White and N. Yahlali},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.05860},
year = {2020}
}