Recent progress in the development of large area silica aerogel for use as RICH radiator in the Belle II experiment
arXiv:1411.4243
Abstract
We report recent progress in the development of large-area hydrophobic silica aerogels for use as radiators in the aerogel-based ring-imaging Cherenkov (A-RICH) counter to be installed in the forward end cap of the Belle II detector, which is currently being upgraded at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Japan. The production of approximately 450 aerogel tiles with refractive indices of either 1.045 or 1.055 was completed in May, 2014, and the tiles are now undergoing optical characterization. Installation of the aerogels was tested by installing them into a partial mock-up of the support structure.
Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Technology and Instrumentation in Particle Physics (TIPP 2014), 4 pages, 3 figures