Analysis of $^{83m}$Kr Prompt Scintillation Signals in the PIXeY Detector

TL;DR

This study investigates the behavior of prompt scintillation signals from $^{83m}$Kr in a xenon detector, revealing two exponential components affecting signal ratios and their dependence on drift time and electric field.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of the $ ext{S1b}/ ext{S1a}$ ratio dependence on time separation and electric field in a xenon TPC, identifying two exponential components with distinct origins.

Findings

Two exponential components in $ ext{S1b}/ ext{S1a}$ ratio with different time constants.

The longer component increases with electric drift field.

The shorter component is likely due to processing effects and pulse overlap.

Abstract

Prompt scintillation signals from $^{83m}$Kr calibration sources are a useful metric to calibrate the spatial variation of light collection efficiency and electric field magnitude of a two phase liquid-gas xenon time projection chamber. Because $^{83m}$Kr decays in two steps, there are two prompt scintillation pulses for each calibration event, denoted S1a and S1b. We study the ratio of S1b to S1a signal sizes in the Particle Identification in Xenon at Yale (PIXeY) experiment and its dependence on the time separation between the two signals ($\Delta t$), notably its increase at low $\Delta t$. In PIXeY data, the $\Delta t$ dependence of S1b/S1a is observed to exhibit two exponential components: one with a time constant of $0.05 \pm 0.02\mu s$, which can be attributed to processing effects and pulse overlap and one with a time constant of $10.2 \pm 2.2\mu s$ that increases in amplitude with electric drift field, the origin of which is not yet understood.