Accurate and MeV-electron track reconstruction with an ultra-low diffusion Xenon/TMA TPC at 10atm Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2015 Elsevier B.V. We report the performance of a 10 atm Xenon/trimethylamine time projection chamber (TPC) for the detection of X-rays (30 keV) and -rays (0.511-1.275 MeV) in conjunction with the accurate tracking of the associated electrons. When operated at such a high pressure and in 1%-admixtures, trimethylamine (TMA) endows Xenon with an extremely low electron diffusion (1.30.13mm- (longitudinal), 0.950.20mm- (transverse) along 1 m drift) besides forming a convenient 'Penning-Fluorescent' mixture. The TPC, that houses 1.1 kg of gas in its fiducial volume, operated continuously for 100 live-days in charge amplification mode. The readout was performed through the recently introduced microbulk Micromegas technology and the AFTER chip, providing a 3D voxelization of 8mm8mm1.2mm for approximately 10 cm/MeV-long electron tracks. Resolution in energy () at full width half maximum (R) inside the fiducial volume ranged from R=14.6% (30 keV) to R=4.6%(1.275MeV). This work was developed as part of the R&D program of the NEXT collaboration for future detector upgrades in the search of the neutrino-less double beta decay (0) in 136Xe, specifically those based on novel gas mixtures. Therefore we ultimately focus on the calorimetric and topological properties of the reconstructed MeV-electron tracks. In particular, the obtained energy resolution has been decomposed in its various contributions and improvements towards achieving the R=1.4%1MeV/ levels obtained in small sensors are discussed.

published proceedings

  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A Accelerators Spectrometers Detectors and Associated Equipment

altmetric score

  • 3.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Collaboration, T. N., Gonzlez-Daz, D., lvarez, V., Borges, F., Camargo, M., Crcel, S., ... Veenhof, R.

citation count

  • 32

complete list of authors

  • Collaboration, The NEXT||González-Díaz, Diego||Álvarez, V||Borges, FIG||Camargo, M||Cárcel, S||Cebrián, S||Cervera, A||Conde, CAN||Dafni, T||Díaz, J||Esteve, R||Fernandes, LMP||Ferrario, P||Ferreira, AL||Freitas, EDC||Gehman, VM||Goldschmidt, A||Gómez-Cadenas, JJ||Gutiérrez, RM||Hauptman, J||Morata, JA Hernando||Herrera, DC||Irastorza, IG||Labarga, L||Laing, A||Liubarsky, I||Lopez-March, N||Lorca, D||Losada, M||Luzón, G||Marí, A||Martín-Albo, J||Martínez-Lema, G||Martínez, A||Miller, T||Monrabal, F||Monserrate, M||Monteiro, CMB||Mora, FJ||Moutinho, LM||Vidal, J Muñoz||Nebot-Guinot, M||Nygren, D||Oliveira, CAB||Pérez, J||Aparicio, JL Pérez||Querol, M||Renner, J||Ripoll, L||Rodríguez, J||Santos, FP||dos Santos, JMF||Serra, L||Shuman, D||Simón, A||Sofka, C||Sorel, M||Toledo, JF||Torrent, J||Tsamalaidze, Z||Veloso, JFCA||Villar, JA||Webb, R||White, JT||Yahlali, N||Azevedo, C||Aznar, F||Calvet, D||Castel, J||Ferrer-Ribas, E||García, JA||Giomataris, I||Gómez, H||Iguaz, FJ||Lagraba, A||Le Coguie, A||Mols, JP||Şahin, Ö||Rodríguez, A||Ruiz-Choliz, E||Segui, L||Tomás, A||Veenhof, R

publication date

  • January 2015