Pulse shape study of the fast scintillation light emitted from xenon-doped liquid argon using silicon photomultipliers

TL;DR

This study investigates the scintillation light time profile of xenon-doped liquid argon using silicon photomultipliers, demonstrating its potential as a fast scintillator for particle detection and discrimination.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurement and modeling of the scintillation time profile in xenon-doped liquid argon up to 1600 ppm concentration.

Findings

Xenon-doped liquid argon exhibits fast scintillation properties.

The developed model accurately describes the scintillation decay processes.

Xenon doping preserves particle identification capabilities via pulse shape discrimination.

Abstract

Xenon-doped liquid argon has been proposed as a good alternative to pure liquid argon in scintillation detectors. In this study, we report on the measurement of the time profile of scintillation light emitted from xenon-doped liquid argon with molar concentrations up to 1600 ppm. A compact setup has been developed for this study, with silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) as the photosensor and $^{210}\mathrm{Po}$ and $^{90}\mathrm{Sr}$ as scintillation sources. An effective model based on the de-excitation processes has been developed to describe the data. The results show that xenon-doped liquid argon is a good fast scintillator and can be used in lieu of tetraphenyl butadiene (TPB) in a way that preserves its capability for particle identification via pulse shape discrimination (PSD).