Speaker
Description
In this presentation the R&D of a gas detector prototype for high precision tracking of low energy nuclear recoils over large gas volumes will be presented.
In our prototype, the scintillation light accompanying the electronic avalanches in a triple GEM structure is detected by a CMOS-based camera through a suitable lens. The CMOS sensors provide a very high granularity along with a very low noise (of the order of a single photon) and a very high sensitivity (70% of quantum efficiency).
Once operated with a large aperture and suitable focal length lens, large areas can be imaged at reduced costs.
Moreover, the optical approach is attempted in presence of a
highly electronegative gas suitable for negative ion drift (SF6 and its admixtures). An additional innovative element is the concurrent readout of the light by means of a suitable photomultiplier system. It will complement the readout by providing the time resolution necessary to separate, for fiducialization purposes, the contributions of the different charge carriers within the same nuclear recoil ionization cluster.
Recent tests on beam demonstrated the achievement of resolutions of the order on tens of μm in the XY plane and hundreds of μm in Z and the feasibility, for the first time ever, of the Negative Ion Drift mechanism at ambient pressure with a very small amount of SF6 percentage.
The idea is to use such a detector in future large scale experiments for directional Dark Matter searches and for measurements of coherent neutrino scattering on nuclei.
Additional applications of this detector might be in the realm of neutron detection, X-ray polarimetry and particle therapy.
| Experimental Collaboration | CYGNUS TPC |
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