Abstract
A liquid helium cryostat has been designed and operated for the purpose of testing visible light photon counter (VLPC) chips at 6.5 K. To achieve the desired operational characteristics for the VLPC devices their operating temperature is restricted to 6.5 K +/− 0.1 K. They will be used in a scintillating fiber tracker being proposed as part of an upgrade of the DO detector at Fermilab. The final version of the scintillating fiber tracker will contain roughly 100000 VLPC channels. Two cryostats with identical thermal design (a 128 channel and a 3072 channel design) have been built to perform the initial VLPC testing. The heat transfer needed to maintain the VLPC at its operating temperature occurs by conduction across an annular helium gas gap to a liquid helium reservoir. Helium boiloff is used to intercept conduction heat leak to the liquid reservoir. ANSYS finite element heat transfer analysis was utilized in the thermal design of the cryostat. The cryostat design and thermal performance (predicted and measured) are presented.
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