Scintillation luminescence for high-pressure xenon gas

Abstract

Scintillation and ionization yields in xenon gas for 5.49MeV alpha-particles were measured in the range of pressure from 0.35 to 3.7MPa and the electric field strength (E) over the number density of xenon atoms (N), E/N from 0 to 5×10−18Vcm2. When our data are normalized at the data point measured by Saito et al., the number of scintillation photons is 2.3×105 while the number of ionization electrons is 2.0×105 at 2.6MPa and at 3.7×10−18Vcm2. The scintillation and ionization yields of xenon doped with 0.2% hydrogen, High-Pressure Xenon gas[H2-0.2%], at 2.6MPa was also measured. Scintillation yield of the Xe–H2 mixture gas is 80% as high as that of pure xenon. It is found that the scintillation yield is luminous enough to generate a trigger pulse of the high-pressure xenon time projection chamber, which is expected as a promising MeV Compton gamma-ray camera.