Enhancing the light yield of He:CF4 based gaseous detector

• Published in: The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields Vol. 84; no. 10; p. 1122
• Main Authors: Amaro, Fernando Domingues, Antonietti, Rita, Baracchini, Elisabetta, Benussi, Luigi, Bianco, Stefano, Campagnola, Roberto, Capoccia, Cesidio, Caponero, Michele, Cardoso, Danilo Santos, de Carvalho, Luan Gomes Mattosinhos, Cavoto, Gianluca, Costa, Igor Abritta, Croce, Antonio, Dané, Emiliano, Dho, Giorgio, Di Giambattista, Flaminia, Di Marco, Emanuele, D’Astolfo, Melba, D’Imperio, Giulia, Fiorina, Davide, Iacoangeli, Francesco, Islam, Zahoor ul, Lima Jùnior, Herman Pessoa, Kemp, Ernesto, Maccarrone, Giovanni, Mano, Rui Daniel Passos, Marcelo Gregorio, Robert Renz, Marques, David José Gaspar, Mazzitelli, Giovanni, McLean, Alasdair Gregor, Messina, Andrea, Meloni, Pietro, Monteiro, Cristina Maria Bernardes, Nobrega, Rafael Antunes, Pains, Igor Fonseca, Paoletti, Emiliano, Passamonti, Luciano, Petrucci, Fabrizio, Piacentini, Stefano, Piccolo, Davide, Pierluigi, Daniele, Pinci, Davide, Prajapati, Atul, Renga, Francesco, Roque, Rita Joana da Cruz, Rosatelli, Filippo, Russo, Alessandro, dos Santos, Joaquim Marques Ferreira, Saviano, Giovanna, Silva, Pedro Alberto Oliveira Costa, Spooner, Neil John Curwen, Tesauro, Roberto, Tomassini, Sandro, Torelli, Samuele
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 29-10-2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Astronomy; Astrophysics and Cosmology; Dark matter; Electric fields; Elementary Particles; Energy resolution; Gas detectors; Gas mixtures; Hadrons; Heavy Ions; Measurement Science and Instrumentation; Nuclear Energy; Nuclear Physics; Photodegradation; Photomultiplier tubes; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Radiation counters; Regular Article - Experimental Physics; Room temperature; Sensors; String Theory; Weakly interacting massive particles
• ISSN: 1434-6044; 1434-6052
• DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-13471-5

The CYGNO experiment aims to build a large (
O
(
10
)
m
3
) directional detector for rare event searches, such as nuclear recoils (NRs) induced by dark matter (DM), such as weakly interactive massive particles (WIMPs). The detector concept comprises a time projection chamber (TPC), filled with a He:CF
4
60/40 scintillating gas mixture at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, equipped with an amplification stage made of a stack of three gas electron multipliers (GEMs) which are coupled to an optical readout. The latter consists in scientific CMOS (sCMOS) cameras and photomultipliers tubes (PMTs). The maximisation of the light yield of the amplification stage plays a major role in the determination of the energy threshold of the experiment. In this paper, we simulate the effect of the addition of a strong electric field below the last GEM plane on the GEM field structure and we experimentally test it by means of a 10
×
10 cm
2
readout area prototype. The experimental measurements analyse stacks of different GEMs and helium concentrations in the gas mixture combined with this extra electric field, studying their performances in terms of light yield, energy resolution and intrinsic diffusion. It is found that the use of this additional electric field permits large light yield increases without degrading intrinsic characteristics of the amplification stage with respect to the regular use of GEMs.