Scintillation of Xenon doped Liquid Argon in the BACON Detector

The BACON liquid argon (LAr) scintillation detector prototype will be used to measure 1 2 intensity, promptness , and decay behavior for pure LAr and xenon (Xe) doped LAr mixtures. 3 The goal is to aid in planning, cost reduction, and improved detection for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) [6]. The scintillation of LAr is in the vacuum ultra-violet (VUV), requiring detectors to use a wavelength shifter to detect light. The typical wavelength shifter used is tetraphenyl butadiene (TPB), which re-emits in the blue. The goal with BACON is to determine if xenon doping at the ppm concentration level is a viable option for LAr detectors. I have preformed initial calibration measurements with our residual gas analyzer (RGA), an important step for characterizing the purity of the LAr in the BACON cryostat. I am currently constructing the auxiliary components for BACON and plan to take data in the Summer of 2016. There is a list of abbreviations in Appendix A. 1 Scintillation is radiation emitted from a media due to energy deposition by high momentum particles. This is 2 distinct from Cherenkov radiation, which is due to particles traveling faster than the media’s local speed of light. Promptness is the measurement of the time delay between the actual time an event occurs and the time the event is 3 detected.