Scintillation decay-time constants for alpha particles and electrons in liquid xenon

TL;DR

This study measures the scintillation decay-time constants for alpha particles and electrons in liquid xenon, providing insights into the underlying processes to enhance detector analysis methods.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed measurement of scintillation decay times for electrons and alpha particles in liquid xenon across various electric fields, advancing understanding of the scintillation process.

Findings

Decay-time constants vary with electric field and particle type.

Energy and field dependence of scintillation signals characterized.

Results inform improved detector signal modeling.

Abstract

Understanding liquid xenon scintillation and ionization processes is of great interest to improve analysis methods in current and future detectors. In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of the scintillation process for excitation by $\mathcal{O}$(10 keV) electrons from a $^{83m}$Kr source and $\mathcal{O}$(6 MeV) $\alpha$-particles from a $^{222}$Rn source, both mixed with the xenon target. The single photon sampling method is used to record photon arrival times in order to obtain the corresponding time distributions for different applied electric fields between about 0.8 V/cm to 1.2 kV/cm. Energy and field dependences of the signals which are observed in the results are discussed.