2010/12/02 by A. Badertscher, A. Curioni, L. Knecht +7 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Anode #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Detector #Electrode #Electron #Gas electron multiplier #Neutrino Physics Research #Nuclear physics #Optics #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Physics #Time projection chamber #physics.ins-det
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.nima.2011.02.100
25 pages, 17 figures
arxiv created 2010/12/02 · openalex publication_date 2011/03/11 · arxiv updated 2015/03/17 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We have previously reported on the construction and successful operation of the novel double phase Liquid Argon Large Electron Multiplier Time Projection Chamber (LAr LEM-TPC). This detector concept provides a 3D-tracking and calorimetric device capable of adjustable charge amplification, a promising readout technology for next-generation neutrino detectors and direct Dark Matter searches. In this paper, we report on the first operation of a LAr LEM-TPC prototype - with an active area of 10×10 cm2 and 21 cm drift length - equipped with a single 1 mm thick LEM amplifying stage and a two dimensional projective readout anode. Cosmic muon events were collected, fully reconstructed and used to characterize the performance of the chamber. The obtained signals provide images of very high quality and the energy loss distributions of minimum ionizing tracks give a direct estimate of the amplification. We find that a stable gain of 27 can be achieved with this detector configuration corresponding to a signal-over-noise ratio larger than 200 for minimum ionizing tracks. The decoupling of the amplification stage and the use of the 2D readout anode offer several advantages which are described in the text.