Development of noble liquid detectors for gamma-ray spectroscopy.

摘要

A high energy resolution liquid argon gridded ionization chamber has been built and tested at the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory. This instrument has a total energy resolution of 32 keV (FWHM) measured for the 976 keV conversion electron line from {dollar}sp{lcub}207{rcub}{dollar}Bi, corresponding to a noise subtracted energy resolution of 26 keV. This value, which was obtained with a drift field of 10.9 kV cm{dollar}sp{lcub}-1{rcub}{dollar}, is the best reported so far in noble liquids and a factor of two better than that achieved with NaI(Tl) detectors. We present experimental results obtained with this detector and interpret them in terms of the physical processes underlying its operation.