A measurement of the absorption of liquid argon scintillation light by dissolved nitrogen at the part-per-million level
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Author(s)
Jones, Benjamin James Poyner
Chiu, C. S.
Conrad, Janet
Ignarra, Christina
Katori, Teppei
Toups, Matthew
Date Issued
July 2013
Journal
Journal of Instrumentation
Publisher
Institute of Physics Publishing
Citation
Jones, B J P, C S Chiu, J M Conrad, C M Ignarra, T Katori, and M Toups. “A Measurement of the Absorption of Liquid Argon Scintillation Light by Dissolved Nitrogen at the Part-Per-Million Level.” Journal of Instrumentation 8, no. 07 (July 24, 2013): P07011–P07011.
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Abstract
We report on a measurement of the absorption length of scintillation light in liquid argon due to dissolved nitrogen at the part-per-million (ppm) level. We inject controlled quantities of nitrogen into a high purity volume of liquid argon and monitor the light yield from an alpha source. The source is placed at different distances from a cryogenic photomultiplier tube assembly. By comparing the light yield from each position we extract the absorption cross section of nitrogen. We find that nitrogen absorbs argon scintillation light with strength of (1.51±0.15) × 10[superscript −4] cm[superscript −1]ppm[superscript −1], corresponding to an absorption cross section of (4.99±0.51) × 10[superscript −21] cm[superscript 2]molecule[superscript −1]. We obtain the relationship between absorption length and nitrogen concentration over the 0 to 50 ppm range and discuss the implications for the design and data analysis of future large liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) detectors. Our results indicate that for a current-generation LArTPC, where a concentration of 2 parts per million of nitrogen is expected, the attenuation length due to nitrogen will be 30±3 meters.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Nuclear Science
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/8/07/p07011
