Electron transport measurements in liquid xenon with Xenoscope, a large-scale DARWIN demonstrator

L. Baudis; Y. Biondi; A. Bismark; A. P. Cimental Chávez; J. J. Cuenca-García; J. Franchi; M. Galloway; F. Girard; R. Peres; D. Ramírez García; P. Sanchez-Lucas; K. Thieme; C. Wittweg

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11823-1

2023 Impact factor 4.2

Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2023) 83: 717
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11823-1

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Electron transport measurements in liquid xenon with Xenoscope, a large-scale DARWIN demonstrator

L. Baudis¹, Y. Biondi¹^,2^b, A. Bismark¹, A. P. Cimental Chávez¹, J. J. Cuenca-García¹, J. Franchi¹, M. Galloway¹, F. Girard¹^h, R. Peres¹^j, D. Ramírez García¹, P. Sanchez-Lucas¹^,3, K. Thieme¹^,4 and C. Wittweg¹

¹ Department of Physics, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057, Zurich, Switzerland
² Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
³ University of Granada, Granada, Spain
⁴ University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, USA

^b yanina.biondi@physik.uzh.ch
^h frederic.girard@physik.uzh.ch
^j ricardo.peres@physik.uzh.ch

Received: 31 March 2023
Accepted: 10 July 2023
Published online: 10 August 2023

Abstract

The DARWIN observatory is a proposed next-generation experiment with 40 tonnes of liquid xenon as an active target in a time projection chamber. To study challenges related to the construction and operation of a multi-tonne scale detector, we have designed and constructed a vertical, full-scale demonstrator for the DARWIN experiment at the University of Zurich. Here, we present the first results from a several-months run with $343 kg$ $343\,\hbox {kg}$ of xenon and electron drift lifetime and transport measurements with a $53 cm$ $53\,\hbox {cm}$ tall purity monitor immersed in the cryogenic liquid. After $88 days$ $88\,\hbox {days}$ of continuous purification, the electron lifetime reached a value of $(664 \pm 23) μ s$ $(664\,\pm \,23)\,\upmu \hbox {s}$ . We measured the drift velocity of electrons for electric fields in the range (25–75) V/cm, and found values consistent with previous measurements. We also calculated the longitudinal diffusion constant of the electron cloud in the same field range, and compared with previous data, as well as with predictions from an empirical model.

© The Author(s) 2023

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