1. Single polarity charge sensing in high pressure xenon using a coplanar anode configuration.
- Author
-
Sullivan, Clair Julia
- Subjects
- Charge Sensing, Configuration, Coplanar Anode, High, Pressure, Single-polarity, Using, Xenon
- Abstract
A new design of a high pressure xenon ionization chamber has been fabricated in an attempt to eliminate the problems associated with acoustical vibrations of the Frisch grid. The function of the traditional Frisch grid has been accomplished by employing a coplanar anode system capable of single polarity charge sensing by means of the Shockley-Ramo theorem. Two different detectors have been built in order to determine if the operation of a high pressure xenon detector in coplanar anode mode is possible. The first is the helical detector comprised of two anode wires wound about a central ceramic core. Through calculation, it is shown that for a cathode bias of -5 kV a potential of 363 V is necessary to collect all of the electrons on the collecting anode, however this is contradicted by the observed pulse waveforms. The results of several experiments are presented that demonstrate the helical detector should work, however in the interest in determining if a coplanar high pressure xenon detector is viable, emphasis was placed on the second detector design. The second design is a parallel plate detector, more analogous to the coplanar semiconductor devices. This detector has demonstrated that it is possible to operate a high pressure xenon detector in coplanar anode mode. However, it is shown that the performance of this detector is limited by high surface leakage current and detector capacitance. Additionally, since the leakage current increases with potential between the two anodes, it is not possible to obtain very high resolution gamma-ray spectroscopy since the required potential between the two anodes for coplanar operation is so high that the detector is already dominated by surface leakage current as this value.
- Published
- 2002