PT Journal
AU NEXT Collaboration (Alvarez, Vea
   Carcel, S
   Cervera-Villanueva, A
   Diaz, J
   Ferrario, P
   Gil, A
   Gomez-Cadenas, JJ
   Laing, A
   Liubarsky, I
   Lorca, D
   Martin-Albo, J
   Martinez, A
   Monrabal, F
   Muñoz Vidal, J
   Nebot-Guinot, M
   Rodriguez, J
   Serra, L
   Simon, A
   Sorel, M
   Yahlali, N
TI Initial results of NEXT-DEMO, a large-scale prototype of the NEXT-100 experiment
SO Journal of Instrumentation
JI J. Instrum.
PY 2013
BP P04002 - 25pp
VL 8
DI 10.1088/1748-0221/8/04/P04002
LA English
DE Double-beta decay detectors; Time projection chambers; Pattern recognition; cluster finding; calibration and fitting methods
AB NEXT-DEMO is a large-scale prototype of the NEXT-100 detector, an electroluminescent time projection chamber that will search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of Xe-136 using 100-150 kg of enriched xenon gas. NEXT-DEMO was built to prove the expected performance of NEXT-100, namely, energy resolution better than 1% FWHM at 2.5MeV and event topological reconstruction. In this paper we describe the prototype and its initial results. A resolution of 1.75% FWHM at 511 keV (which extrapolates to 0.8% FWHM at 2.5 MeV) was obtained at 10 bar pressure using a gamma-ray calibration source. Also, a basic study of the event topology along the longitudinal coordinate is presented, proving that it is possible to identify the distinct dE/dx of electron tracks in high-pressure xenon using an electroluminescence TPC.
ER