A Simulation of the Optical Attenuation of TPB Coated Light-guide Detectors

Abstract

This note describes simple simulations which were performed in order to understand the attenuation behaviors of acrylic light-guides operated in air and argon, which were characterized in \cite{Baptista:2012bf}. Whilst these simulations are only at the level of sophistication of a toy model, they illustrate interesting non-exponential light attenuation effects and the differences between operating light-guide based detectors in argon and air environments. We investigate the effects of surface absorption, surface roughness and wavelength dependence, and use a model tuned on the light-guide attenuation curve measured in air to make a prediction of the light-guide attenuation curve in argon. This curve is compared with data from a liquid argon test stand, and an improvement over a simple exponential model is observed.