Contreras, T., Martins, A., Stanford, C., Escobar, C. O., Guenette, R., Stancari, M., et al. (2023). A method to characterize metalenses for light collection applications. J. Instrum., 18(9), T09004–11pp.
Abstract: Metalenses and metasurfaces are promising emerging technologies that could improve light collection in light collection detectors, concentrating light on small area photodetectors such as silicon photomultipliers. Here we present a detailed method to characterize metalenses to assess their efficiency at concentrating monochromatic light coming from a wide range of incidence angles, not taking into account their imaging quality.
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NEXT Collaboration(Byrnes, N. K. et al), Ayet, A., Carcel, S., Kellerer, F., Lopez-March, N., Mano, R. D. P., et al. (2024). Fluorescence imaging of individual ions and molecules in pressurized noble gases for barium tagging in 136Xe. Nat. Commun., 15(1), 10595–13pp.
Abstract: The imaging of individual Ba2+ ions in high pressure xenon gas is one possible way to attain background-free sensitivity to neutrinoless double beta decay and hence establish the Majorana nature of the neutrino. In this paper we demonstrate selective single Ba2+ ion imaging inside a high-pressure xenon gas environment. Ba2+ ions chelated with molecular chemosensors are resolved at the gas-solid interface using a diffraction-limited imaging system with scan area of 1 x 1 cm2 located inside 10 bar of xenon gas. This form of microscopy represents key ingredient in the development of barium tagging for neutrinoless double beta decay searches in 136Xe. This also provides a new tool for studying the photophysics of fluorescent molecules and chemosensors at the solid-gas interface to enable bottom-up design of catalysts and sensors.
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NEXT Collaboration(Contreras, T. et al), Ayet, S., Carcel, S., Kellerer, F., Lopez-March, N., Martin-Albo, J., et al. (2024). Measurement of energy resolution with the NEXT-White silicon photomultipliers. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 112–23pp.
Abstract: The NEXT-White detector, a high-pressure gaseous xenon time projection chamber, demonstrated the excellence of this technology for future neutrinoless double beta decay searches using photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) to measure energy and silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) to extract topology information. This analysis uses Kr-83m data from the NEXT-White detector to measure and understand the energy resolution that can be obtained with the SiPMs, rather than with PMTs. The energy resolution obtained of (10.9 0.6)%, full-width half-maximum, is slightly larger than predicted based on the photon statistics resulting from very low light detection coverage of the SiPM plane in the NEXT-White detector. The difference in the predicted and measured resolution is attributed to poor corrections, which are expected to be improved with larger statistics. Furthermore, the noise of the SiPMs is shown to not be a dominant factor in the energy resolution and may be negligible when noise subtraction is applied appropriately, for high-energy events or larger SiPM coverage detectors. These results, which are extrapolated to estimate the response of large coverage SiPM planes, are promising for the development of future, SiPM-only, readout planes that can offer imaging and achieve similar energy resolution to that previously demonstrated with PMTs.
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NEXT Collaboration(Dey, E. et al), Ayet, A., Byrnes, N., Carcel, S., Kellerer, F., Lopez-March, N., et al. (2025). Ion transport on phased radiofrequency carpets in xenon gas. Eur. Phys. J. C, 85(6), 688–15pp.
Abstract: We present the design and performance of a four-phased radiofrequency (RF) carpet system for ion transport between 200-600 mbar, significantly higher than previously demonstrated RF carpet applications. The RF carpet, designed with a 160 mu\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\upmu $$\end{document}m pitch, is applied to the lateral collection of ions in xenon at pressures up to 600 mbar. We demonstrate transport efficiency of caesium ions across varying pressures, and compare with microscopic simulations made in the SIMION package. The novel use of an N-phased RF carpet can achieve ion levitation and controlled lateral motion in a denser environment than is typical for RF ion transport in gases. This feature makes such carpets strong candidates for ion transport to single ion sensors envisaged for future neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments in xenon gas.
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