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On proportional scintillation in very large liquid xenon detectors

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Abstract

The charge readout of a liquid xenon (LXe) detector via proportional scintillation in the liquid phase was first realized by the Waseda group 40 years ago, but the technical challenges involved were overwhelming. Although the tests were successful, this method was finally discarded and eventually nearly forgotten. Currently, this approach is not considered for large LXe dark matter detectors. Instead, the dual-phase technology was selected despite many limitations and challenges. In two independent studies, two groups from Columbia University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University reevaluated proportional scintillation in the liquid phase. Both studies established the merits for very large LXe detectors, but the Columbia group also encountered apparent limitations, namely the shadowing of the light by the anode wires, and a dependence of the pulse shape on the drift path of the electrons in the anode region. The differences between the two studies, however, are not intrinsic to the technique, but a direct consequence of the chosen geometry. Taking the geometrical differences into account, the results match without ambiguity. They also agree with the original results from the Waseda group.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai Key Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology(INPAC), 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Pratibha Juyal, Karl-Ludwig Giboni, Xiang-Dong Ji & Jiang-Lai Liu

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  1. Pratibha Juyal
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  2. Karl-Ludwig Giboni
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  3. Xiang-Dong Ji
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  4. Jiang-Lai Liu
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Correspondence to Pratibha Juyal.

Additional information

This work has been supported by a Grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2016YFA0400301).

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Juyal, P., Giboni, KL., Ji, XD. et al. On proportional scintillation in very large liquid xenon detectors. NUCL SCI TECH 31, 93 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-020-00797-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-020-00797-4

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