No Arabic abstract
We are developing imaging and photon counting UV-MCP detectors, which are sensitive in the wavelength range from far ultraviolet to near ultraviolet. A good quantum efficiency, solar blindness and high spatial resolution is the aim of our development. The sealed detector has a Cs-activated photoactive layer of GaN (or similarly advanced photocathode), which is operated in semitransparent mode on (001)-MgF 2 . The detector comprises a stack of two long-life MCPs and a coplanar cross strip anode with advanced readout electronics. The main challenge is the flawless growth of the GaN photocathode layer as well as the requirements for the sealing of the detector, to prevent a degradation of the photocathode. We present here the detector concept and the experimental setup, examine in detail the status in the production and describe the current status of the readout electronics development.
The LUX (Large Underground Xenon) detector is a two-phase xenon Time Projection Chamber (TPC) designed to search for WIMP-nucleon dark matter interactions. As with all noble element detectors, continuous purification of the detector medium is essential to produce a large ($>$1ms) electron lifetime; this is necessary for efficient measurement of the electron signal which in turn is essential for achieving robust discrimination of signal from background events. In this paper we describe the development of a novel purification system deployed in a prototype detector. The results from the operation of this prototype indicated heat exchange with an efficiency above 94% up to a flow rate of 42 slpm, allowing for an electron drift length greater than 1 meter to be achieved in approximately two days and sustained for the duration of the testing period.
Aiming at the observation of cosmic-ray chemical composition at the knee energy region, we have been developinga new type air-shower core detector (YAC, Yangbajing Air shower Core detector array) to be set up at Yangbajing (90.522$^circ$ E, 30.102$^circ$ N, 4300 m above sea level, atmospheric depth: 606 g/m$^2$) in Tibet, China. YAC works together with the Tibet air-shower array (Tibet-III) and an underground water cherenkov muon detector array (MD) as a hybrid experiment. Each YAC detector unit consists of lead plates of 3.5 cm thick and a scintillation counter which detects the burst size induced by high energy particles in the air-shower cores. The burst size can be measured from 1 MIP (Minimum Ionization Particle) to $10^{6}$ MIPs. The first phase of this experiment, named YAC-I, consists of 16 YAC detectors each having the size 40 cm $times$ 50 cm and distributing in a grid with an effective area of 10 m$^{2}$. YAC-I is used to check hadronic interaction models. The second phase of the experiment, called YAC-II, consists of 124 YAC detectors with coverage about 500 m$^2$. The inner 100 detectors of 80 cm $times $ 50 cm each are deployed in a 10 $times$ 10 matrix from with a 1.9 m separation and the outer 24 detectors of 100 cm $times$ 50 cm each are distributed around them to reject non-core events whose shower cores are far from the YAC-II array. YAC-II is used to study the primary cosmic-ray composition, in particular, to obtain the energy spectra of proton, helium and iron nuclei between 5$times$$10^{13}$ eV and $10^{16}$ eV covering the knee and also being connected with direct observations at energies around 100 TeV. We present the design and performance of YAC-II in this paper.
Josephson junctions, in appropriate configurations, can be excellent candidates for detection of single photons in the microwave frequency band. Such possibility has been recently addressed in the framework of galactic axion detection. Here are reported recent developments in the modelling and simulation of dynamic behaviour of a Josephson junction single microwave photon detector. For a Josephson junction to be enough sensitive, small critical currents and operating temperatures of the order of ten of mK are necessary. Thermal and quantum tunnelling out of the zero-voltage state can also mask the detection process. Axion detection would require dark count rates in the order of 0.001 Hz. It is, therefore, is of paramount importance to identify proper device fabrication parameters and junction operation point.
To achieve high precision and accuracy for mass measurements of exotic nuclei by Time-of-flight (TOF) methods: high-resolution beam-line magnetic-rigidity time-of-flight (B$rho$-TOF) and in-ring isochronous mass spectrometry (IMS), a large-area electrostatic detector which possesses high position resolution and good timing resolution at the same time is developed at the Rare-RI Ring in RIBF, RIKEN Nishina Center, Japan. Besides TOF mass measurements, the detector system will also be used for heavy ion beam trajectory monitoring or momentum measurements for both beam-line and in-ring at the Rare-RI Ring. The position and timing measurements of heavy ions are performed by detecting the secondary electrons (SEs) emitted from a conversion foil during the passage of the ion. The SEs are accelerated and bent with an angle of $90^{circ}$ by electrostatic fields onto a micro-channel-plate (MCP) electron multiplier which is coupled with a position-sensitive delay-line anode. The dependence of the timing and position resolution on applied high voltages of the detector potential plates has been studied systematically via simulation and experimentally. An isochronous condition of secondary electron transmission in the electrostatic field of the detector is chosen to optimize the structure of the detector for high performance. The best achieved timing resolution is less than 50 ps (in $sigma$) and position resolution $sim$ 1 mm (in $sigma$) for 2 dimensions, respectively. The overall efficiency is $sim$ 95$%$ for heavy ion beam and $sim$ 75$%$ for $alpha$ particle from $^{241}$Am source.
Results obtained with a triple GEM detector operated in pure CF4 with and without a reflective CsI photocathode are presented. The detector operates in a stable mode at gains up to 10^4. A deviation from exponential growth starts to develop when the total charge exceeds ~ 4 10^6 e leading to gain saturation when the total charge is ~ 2 10^7 e and making the structure relatively robust against discharges. No aging effects are observed in the GEM foils after a total accumulated charge of ~ 10 mC/cm^2 at the anode. The ion back-flow current to the reflective photocathode is comparable to the electron current to the anode. However, no significant degradation of the CsI photocathode is observed for a total ion back-flow charge of ~ 7 mC/cm^2.