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Doping Liquid Argon with Xenon in ProtoDUNE Single-Phase: Effects on Scintillation Light
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Doping Liquid Argon with Xenon in ProtoDUNE Single-Phase: Effects on Scintillation Light

DUNE Collaboration, A. Abed Abud, B Abi, R Acciarri, M. A Acero, M. R Adames, G Adamov, M Adamowski, D Adams, M Adinolfi, …
arXiv.org
02 Feb 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2402.01568
url
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2402.01568View
Preprint (Author's original) Open arXiv.org - Non-exclusive license to distribute

Abstract

Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors
Doping of liquid argon TPCs (LArTPCs) with a small concentration of xenon is a technique for light-shifting and facilitates the detection of the liquid argon scintillation light. In this paper, we present the results of the first doping test ever performed in a kiloton-scale LArTPC. From February to May 2020, we carried out this special run in the single-phase DUNE Far Detector prototype (ProtoDUNE-SP) at CERN, featuring 770 t of total liquid argon mass with 410 t of fiducial mass. The goal of the run was to measure the light and charge response of the detector to the addition of xenon, up to a concentration of 18.8 ppm. The main purpose was to test the possibility for reduction of non-uniformities in light collection, caused by deployment of photon detectors only within the anode planes. Light collection was analysed as a function of the xenon concentration, by using the pre-existing photon detection system (PDS) of ProtoDUNE-SP and an additional smaller set-up installed specifically for this run. In this paper we first summarize our current understanding of the argon-xenon energy transfer process and the impact of the presence of nitrogen in argon with and without xenon dopant. We then describe the key elements of ProtoDUNE-SP and the injection method deployed. Two dedicated photon detectors were able to collect the light produced by xenon and the total light. The ratio of these components was measured to be about 0.65 as 18.8 ppm of xenon were injected. We performed studies of the collection efficiency as a function of the distance between tracks and light detectors, demonstrating enhanced uniformity of response for the anode-mounted PDS. We also show that xenon doping can substantially recover light losses due to contamination of the liquid argon by nitrogen.

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