Eur. Phys. J. C (2022) 82: 1125
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-11072-8

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Performance of novel VUV-sensitive Silicon Photo-Multipliers for nEXO

¹ TRIUMF, V6T 2A3, Vancouver, BC, Canada
² Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China
³ Brookhaven National Laboratory, 11973, Upton, NY, USA
⁴ Department of Physics, Drexel University, 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USA
⁵ Physics Department, McGill University, H3A 2T8, Montréal, QC, Canada
⁶ Amherst Center for Fundamental Interactions and Physics Department, University of Massachusetts, 01003, Amherst, MA, USA
⁷ Wright Laboratory, Department of Physics, Yale University, 06511, New Haven, CT, USA
⁸ Department of Physics, University of California San Diego, 92093, La Jolla, CA, USA
⁹ Physics Department, Stanford University, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA
¹⁰ Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 99352, Richland, WA, USA
¹¹ Université de Sherbrooke, J1K 2R1, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
¹² Department of Physics, Carleton University, K1S 5B6, Ottawa, ON, Canada
¹³ National Research Center “Kurchatov Institute”, 117218, Moscow, Russia
¹⁴ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 94550, Livermore, CA, USA
¹⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kentucky, 40506, Lexington, KY, USA
¹⁶ SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 94025, Menlo Park, CA, USA
¹⁷ Department of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 12180, Troy, NY, USA
¹⁸ School of Natural Sciences, Laurentian University, P3E 2C6, Sudbury, ON, Canada
¹⁹ SNOLAB, P3E 2C6, Sudbury, ON, Canada
²⁰ Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100029, Beijing, China
²¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, 35487, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
²² Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 28403, Wilmington, NC, USA
²³ Physics Department, University of Illinois, 61801, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA
²⁴ Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 37831, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
²⁵ Physics Department, Colorado State University, 80523, Fort Collins, CO, USA
²⁶ Skyline College, 94066, San Bruno, CA, USA
²⁷ Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics (ECAP), Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058, Erlangen, Germany
²⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, V6T 1Z1, Vancouver, BC, Canada
²⁹ Department of Physics, University of South Dakota, 57069, Vermillion, SD, USA
³⁰ Department of Physics, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado School of Mines, 80401, Golden, CO, USA
³¹ IBS Center for Underground Physics, 34126, Daejeon, Korea
³² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of the Western Cape, P/B X17, 7535, Bellville, South Africa
³³ SUBATECH, IMT Atlantique, CNRS/IN2P3, Université de Nantes, 44307, Nantes, France
³⁴ Department of Physics and CEEM, Indiana University, 47405, Bloomington, IN, USA
³⁵ Physics Department, Princeton University, 08540, Princeton, NJ, USA
³⁶ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China
³⁷ Laboratory for Nuclear Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
³⁸ King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, KACST, 11442, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
³⁹ Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, USA
⁴⁰ Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

^a giacomo@triumf.ca
^d caogf@ihep.ac.cn

Received: 16 September 2022
Accepted: 23 November 2022
Published online: 13 December 2022

Abstract

Liquid xenon time projection chambers are promising detectors to search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0), due to their response uniformity, monolithic sensitive volume, scalability to large target masses, and suitability for extremely low background operations. The nEXO collaboration has designed a tonne-scale time projection chamber that aims to search for 0 of Xe with projected half-life sensitivity of  yr. To reach this sensitivity, the design goal for nEXO is 1% energy resolution at the decay Q-value ( keV). Reaching this resolution requires the efficient collection of both the ionization and scintillation produced in the detector. The nEXO design employs Silicon Photo-Multipliers (SiPMs) to detect the vacuum ultra-violet, 175 nm scintillation light of liquid xenon. This paper reports on the characterization of the newest vacuum ultra-violet sensitive Fondazione Bruno Kessler VUVHD3 SiPMs specifically designed for nEXO, as well as new measurements on new test samples of previously characterised Hamamatsu VUV4 Multi Pixel Photon Counters (MPPCs). Various SiPM and MPPC parameters, such as dark noise, gain, direct crosstalk, correlated avalanches and photon detection efficiency were measured as a function of the applied over voltage and wavelength at liquid xenon temperature (163 K). The results from this study are used to provide updated estimates of the achievable energy resolution at the decay Q-value for the nEXO design.