PERFORMANCE OF A LIQUID XENON CALORIMETER CRYOGENIC SYSTEM FOR THE MEG EXPERIMENT

The μ-particle rare decay physics experiment, the MU-E-GAMMA (MEG) experiment, will soon be operational at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Zurich. To achieve the extremely high sensitivity required to detect gamma rays, 800 L of liquid xenon is used as the medium in the calorimeter, viewed by 830 photomultiplier tubes (PMT) immersed in it. The required liquid xenon purity is of the order of ppb of water, and is obtained by using a cryogenic centrifugal pump and cold molecular sieves. The heat load of the calorimeter at 165 K is to be approximately 120 W, which is removed by a pulse-tube cryocooler developed at KEK and built by Iwatani Industrial Gas Corp., with a cooling power of about 200 W at 165 K. The cryogenic system is also equipped with a 1000-L dewar. This paper describes the results of an initial performance test of each cryogenic component.