Measurement of the ion blocking by the passive bi-polar grid

TL;DR

This study investigates how a passive bi-polar wire grid can reduce ion backflow in time projection chambers, especially under strong magnetic fields, potentially improving detector longevity and performance.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a passive bi-polar wire grid effectively attenuates ion current more than electron current in magnetic fields, offering a new method to suppress ion backflow.

Findings

Grid transparency to ions decreases with magnetic field strength.

The grid effectively suppresses ion backflow in strong magnetic fields.

Electron transparency remains relatively unaffected by the magnetic field.

Abstract

The ion backflow is the main limiting factor for operating time projection chambers at high event rates. A significant effort is invested by many experimental groups to solve this problem. This paper explores a solution based on operating a passive bi-polar wire grid. In the presence of the magnetic field, the grid more effectively attenuates the ion current than the electron current going through it. Transparencies of the grid to electrons and ions are measured for different gas mixtures and magnitudes of the magnetic field. The results suggest that in a sufficiently strong magnetic field, the bi-polar wire grid can be used as an effective and independent device to suppress the ion backflow in time projection chambers.