TY  - JOUR
AU  - Freitas, E. D. C.
AU  - Monteiro, C. M. B.
AU  - Ball, M.
AU  - Gomez-Cadenas, J. J.
AU  - Lopes, J. A. M.
AU  - Lux, T.
AU  - Sanchez, F.
AU  - dos Santos, J. M. F.
PY  - 2010
DA  - 2010//
TI  - Secondary scintillation yield in high-pressure xenon gas for neutrinoless double beta decay (0 nu beta beta) search
T2  - Phys. Lett. B
JO  - Physics Letters B
SP  - 205
EP  - 210
VL  - 684
IS  - 4-5
PB  - Elsevier Science Bv
KW  - Neutrino
KW  - Neutrinoless double-beta decay
KW  - Secondary scintillation
KW  - Xenon
KW  - High-pressure
AB  - The search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0 nu beta beta) is an important topic in contemporary physics with many active experiments. New projects are planning to use high-pressure xenon gas as both source and detection medium. The secondary scintillation processes available in noble gases permit large amplification with negligible statistical fluctuations, offering the prospect of energy resolution approaching the Fano factor limit. This Letter reports results for xenon secondary scintillation yield, at room temperature, as a function of electric field in the gas scintillation gap for pressures ranging from 2 to 10 bar. A Large Area Avalanche Photodiode (LAAPD) collected the VUV secondary scintillation produced in the gas. X-rays directly absorbed in the LAAPD are used as a reference for determining the number of charge carriers produced by the scintillation pulse and, hence, the number of photons impinging the LAAPD. The number of photons produced per drifting electron and per kilovolt, the so-called scintillation amplification parameter, displays a small increase with pressure, ranging from 141 +/- 6 at 2 bar to 170 +/- 10 at 8 bar. In our setup, this Parameter does not increase above 8 bar due to nonnegligible electron attachment. The results are in good agreement with those presented in the literature in the 1 to 3 bar range. The increase of the scintillation amplification parameter with pressure for high gas densities has been also observed in former work at cryogenic temperatures.
SN  - 0370-2693
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2010.01.013
DO  - 10.1016/j.physletb.2010.01.013
LA  - English
N1  - ISI:000275009600006
ID  - Freitas_etal2010
ER  -