Bonn 2020 – scientific programme
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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 61: Methods of astroparticle physics IV
T 61.4: Talk
Wednesday, April 1, 2020, 17:15–17:30, L-3.001
Characterizing the response of a liquid xenon time projection chamber to α-particles — •Dominick Cichon, Guillaume Eurin, Florian Jörg, Teresa Marrodán Undagoitia, and Natascha Rupp — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany
Liquid xenon (LXe) time projection chambers (TPCs) are at the forefront of the search for new physics, especially regarding the hunt for particle dark matter. In such detectors, 222Rn and its daughters often belong to the major sources of background encountered. The α-decays of the chain provide a way to both estimate rates of radon-related background and to study its distribution within the detector. However, at the time of writing, only a scarce amount of data on certain important α-particle response parameters, such as signal yields in LXe, is available.
In this talk, measurements of α-particle light and charge yields at different electric field strengths are presented. They complement the currently available data and were made with a small-scale LXe TPC. It was necessary to attenuate the scintillation light seen by the TPC’s photosensors, as they would saturate otherwise. For this purpose, auxilliary measurements of the transmittance of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a common material in xenon TPCs, for LXe scintillation light (175 nm) were conducted and are also presented here. They make the construction of attenuators with well-defined reduction factors possible and also help future detectors, such as DARWIN, with optimizing TPC design in terms of PTFE material budget.