Detection of Alpha Particles and Low Energy Gamma Rays by Thermo-Bonded Micromegas in Xenon Gas
arXiv:1308.2073 · doi:10.1109/TNS.2013.2265018
Abstract
Micromegas is a type of micro-pattern gaseous detector currently under R&D for applications in rare event search experiments. Here we report the performance of a Micromegas structure constructed with a micromesh thermo-bonded to a readout plane, motivated by its potential application in two-phase xenon detectors for dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. The study is carried out in pure xenon at room temperature. Measurements with alpha particles from the Americium-241 source showed that gas gains larger than 200 can be obtained at xenon pressure up to 3 atm. Gamma rays down to 8 keV were observed with such a device.
The article has been accepted for publication on IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science