Long-term operation of a double phase LAr LEM Time Projection Chamber with a simplified anode and extraction-grid design

Abstract

We report on the successful operation of a double phase Liquid Argon Large Electron Multiplier Time Projection Chamber (LAr LEM-TPC) equipped with two dimensional projective anodes with dimensions 10$\times$10 cm${}^2$, and with a maximum drift length of 21 cm. The anodes were manufactured for the first time from a single multilayer printed circuit board (PCB). Various layouts of the readout views have been tested and optimised. In addition, the ionisation charge was efficiently extracted from the liquid to the gas phase with a single grid instead of two previously. We studied the response and the gain of the detector to cosmic muon tracks. To study long-term stability over several weeks, we continuously operated the chamber at fixed electric field settings. We reproducibly observe that after an initial decrease with a characteristic time of $\tau \approx 1.6$ days, the observed gain is stable. In 46 days of operation, a total of 14.6 million triggers have been collected at a stable effective gain of $G_{\infty }\sim 15$ corresponding to a signal-to-noise ratio $(S/N)\gtrsim 60$ for minimum ionising tracks. During the full period, eight discharges across the LEM were observed. A maximum effective gain of 90 was also observed, corresponding to a signal-to-noise ratio $(S/N)\gtrsim 400$ for minimum ionising tracks, or $S/N\approx 10$ for an energy deposition of 15 keV on a single readout channel.

19 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Liquid noble gas detectors for low energy particle physics
• Underground Neutrino Detectors for Particle and Astroparticle Science: the Giant Liquid Argon Charge Imaging ExpeRiment (GLACIER)
• Experiments For CP-Violation: A Giant Liquid Argon Scintillation, Cerenkov And Charge Imaging Experiment ?
• Construction and operation of a Double Phase LAr Large Electron Multiplier Time Projection Chamber
• Stable operation with gain of a double phase Liquid Argon LEM-TPC with a 1 mm thick segmented LEM
• Test of a Liquid Argon TPC in a magnetic field and investigation of high temperature superconductors in liquid argon and nitrogen

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Gaseous and dual-phase time projection chambers for imaging rare processes
• Performance study of the effective gain of the double phase liquid Argon LEM Time Projection Chamber
• Review of Liquid Argon Detector Technologies in the Neutrino Sector
• Measurements of charging-up processes in THGEM-based particle detectors
• A 4 tonne demonstrator for large-scale dual-phase liquid argon time projection chambers
• Operation of a THGEM-based detector in low-pressure Helium
• High Voltage in Noble Liquids for High Energy Physics
• The Thick Gas Electron Multiplier and its derivatives: physics, technologies and applications
• Development of a novel, windowless, amorphous selenium based photodetector for use in liquid noble detectors
• First test of a high voltage feedthrough for liquid Argon TPCs connected to a 300 kV power supply
• Study of scintillation light collection, production and propagation in a 4 tonne dual-phase LArTPC
• First results of Resistive-Plate Well (RPWELL) detector operation at 163 K
• Charge and Light Production in the Charge Readout System of a Dual Phase LAr TPC