Further Work with Noble Element Scintillators

Liquid noble gas detectors for low energy particle physics

“…The photomultiplier was coupled to a liquid xenon chamber through a MgF 2 window and operated at 173 K under continuous flow of He or Ne based gas mixtures at 1.1 bar; CH 4 and CF 4 were used as admixtures to avoid condensation at low temperature. A reflective CsI photocathode was deposited on one side of a THGEM.…”

“…Liquefied noble gases have attracted the attention of experimental physicists since the middle of the 20th century [1][2][3][4]. The unique combination of their scintillation properties with the fact that electrons released in the ionization process can remain free to drift across long distances favorably distinguishes these liquids from other dense detector media.…”

Luminescence of gases excited by high-energy radiation. Part 1.—Collisional deactivation in nitrogen

“…The light emission following the absorption of high-energy radiation in gases at low pressures (< 10-2 mm) is of interest in connection with the study of the aurora,1 while the emission at higher pressures is used in gas scintillators. 2 The emission at high pressures-the subject of this paper-was first studied in 1903 3 but little work on the excitation processes has been reported since, probably because of the very low intensities produced by ordinary radiation sources (e.g., in the present work, the power input at 100 mm pressure was only of the order of 10-5 W cm-3) ; the literature up to 1958 is reviewed in ref. (4).…”

Measurement of the quantum efficiency of noble-gas scintillators for X-rays

“…At these wavelengths the photoelectric effect is dominant, and the rather feeble photoelectrons from the absorption of a Cr Ksc. photon generate some 100 ion pairs in the gas-an adequate number to ensure negligible statistical losses (West 1953, Patla 1960.…”

“…Although data on cross sections for excitation are rather scarce (Platzmann 1961), Northrop et al (1958) point out that transition probabilities are proportional to lzv (Heitler 1954) and that in general the ultra-violet components will be favoured. This, together with the large separation of the significant energy levels in the rare gases, suggests that the contribution to scintillations in the visible from the relaxation of excited atoms is likely to be small, and that te is small compared with ti.…”