Speaker
Description
Many particle and rare-event search detectors use liquid scintillators as the active detector material. Candidate scintillating fluids include liquid noble elements such as Liquid Argon (LAr) and Liquid Xenon (LXe). Detectors that make use of scintillators hold the fluid inside an acrylic vessel, which can be coated with various films. One common coating is 1,1,4,-tetraphenyl-1,3-butadiene (TPB) which is a wavelength shifter that converts ultraviolet (UV) lighted emitted by the scintillator into visible wavelength wavelengths that are detectable by photodetectors, such as photomultiplier tubes. Another coating of interest is Clevios, an optically transparent conductive organic polymer. One application of this material is to generate a voltage gradient between two electrodes for functionality in a time projection chamber.
The acrylic vessel, coatings, and other detector components can emit undesirable fluorescent and scintillation light that contribute to background signals in the experiment. It is critical that the optical properties of these materials be investigated to support the efforts of such rare-event search detectors. In addition, optical properties of a material change with temperatures, providing a motivation to study such materials at the cryogenic operating temperature of liquid scintillator detectors.
The optical cryostat lab at Queen’s University is well suited to study photoluminescent properties of inorganic scintillators, coatings, and their substrates at temperatures ranging from 300K to 4K. An overview of lab activities to be presented include previously studied samples, data acquisition/analysis, and preliminary results from recent measurements.
| Keyword-1 | Fluorescence |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | Scintillation |
| Keyword-3 | Wavelength-Shifter |
