Measurement of the transverse diffusion coefficient of charge in liquid xenon

Abstract

Liquid xenon (LXe) is a very attractive material as a detection medium for ionization detectors due to its high density, high atomic number, and low energy required to produce electron-ion pairs. Therefore it has been used in several applications, like {\gamma} detection or direct detection of dark matter. Now Subatech is working on the R & D of LXe Compton telescope for 3{\gamma} medical imaging, which can make precise tridimensional localization of a ({\beta}+, {\gamma}) radioisotope emitter. The diffusion of charge carriers will directly affect the spatial resolution of LXe ionization signal. We will report how we measure the transverse diffusion coefficient for different electric field (0.5 ~ 1.2 kV/cm) by observing the spray of charge carriers on drift length varying until 12cm. With very-low-noise front-end electronics and complete Monte-Carlo simulation of the experiment, the values of transverse diffusion coefficient are measured precisely.