Micromegas operation in high pressure xenon: charge and scintillation readout

Abstract

The operational characteristics of a Micromegas operating in pure xenon at the pressure range of 1 to 10 bar are investigated. The maximum charge gain achieved in each pressure is approximately constant, around 4x10^2, for xenon pressures up to 5 bar and decreasing slowly above this pressure down to values somewhat above 10^2 at 10 bar. The MM presents the highest gains for xenon pressures above 4 bar, when compared to other micropattern gaseous multipliers. The lowest energy resolution obtained for X-rays of 22.1 keV exhibits a steady increase with pressure, from 12% at 1bar to about 32% at 10 bar. The effective scintillation yield, defined as the number of photons exiting through the MM mesh holes per primary electron produced in the conversion region was calculated. This yield is about 2x10^2 photons per primary electron at 1 bar, increasing to about 6x10^2 at 5 bar and, then, decreasing again to 2x10^2 at 10 bar. The readout of this scintillation by a suitable photosensor will result in higher gains but with increased statistical fluctuations.

arXiv comment22 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Secondary Scintillation Yield in Pure Xenon
• Optical readout tracking detector concept using secondary scintillation from liquid argon generated by a thick gas electron multiplier
• Energy resolution of alpha particles in a microbulk Micromegas detector at high pressure Argon and Xenon mixtures
• Physics of multi-GEM structures
• Cryogenic avalanche detectors based on gas electron multipliers
• Operation of a Thick Gas Electron Multiplier (THGEM) in Ar, Xe and Ar-Xe
• Operation of MHSP multipliers in high pressure pure noble-gas
• Further studies of GEM performance in dense noble gases

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• Modelling the behaviour of microbulk Micromegas in Xenon/trimethylamine gas
• Status of R&D on Micromegas for Rare Event Searches: The T-REX project
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• Micromegas-TPC operation at high pressure in Xenon-trimethylamine mixtures
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