Background Simulation of a Fission Fragment Chamber in the Experiment of 209Bi(e, e'K+)209ΛPb

Abstract

An experiment for measuring the hyperon-related fission rate was carried out with the reaction 209Bi(e, e'K+)209ΛPb at the Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory (Jlab). In the experiment, the performance of the fission fragment detector (FFD) was dramatically crashed by the background particles in comparison with that during the test without beam. The scattering of the high intensity (500 nA) primary electrons was the dominant cause. Using the GEANT4 toolkit, this report simulates the experimental situation of the target chamber in which the FFD was located. The simulation results indicate that the background particles were dominantly δ electrons, and protons and alpha particles were the important heavy background particles. The performance of the multi-wire proportional chambers (MWPCs) depends not only on the background-particle intensity but also the current density, which was also given by the simulation code. Furthermore, the measures to suppress the background particles were also investigated with the simulation code.