The effects of dissolved methane upon liquid argon scintillation light

In this paper we report on measurements of the effects of dissolved methane upon argon scintillation light. We monitor the light yield from an alpha source held 20 cm from a cryogenic photomultiplier tube (PMT) assembly as methane is injected into a high-purity liquid argon volume. We observe signif...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of instrumentation 2013-12, Vol.8 (12), p.P12015-P12015
Main Authors: Jones, B J P, Alexander, T, Back, H O, Collin, G, Conrad, J M, Greene, A, Katori, T, Pordes, S, Toups, M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Argon
Assembly
Dissolution
Instrumentation
Liquids
Methane
Monitors
Quenching
Scintillation
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Summary:In this paper we report on measurements of the effects of dissolved methane upon argon scintillation light. We monitor the light yield from an alpha source held 20 cm from a cryogenic photomultiplier tube (PMT) assembly as methane is injected into a high-purity liquid argon volume. We observe significant suppression of the scintillation light yield by dissolved methane at the 10 part per billion (ppb) level. By examining the late scintillation light time constant, we determine that this loss is caused by an absorption process and also see some evidence of methane-induced scintillation quenching at higher concentrations (50-100 ppb). Using a second PMT assembly we look for visible re-emission features from the dissolved methane which have been reported in gas-phase argon methane mixtures, and we find no evidence of visible re-emission from liquid-phase argon methane mixtures at concentrations between 10 ppb and 0.1%.
ISSN:1748-0221
1748-0221
DOI:10.1088/1748-0221/8/12/P12015