Measurement of the longitudinal diffusion of ionization electrons in the MicroBooNE detector

Accurate knowledge of electron transport properties is vital to understanding the information provided by liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs). Ionization electron drift-lifetime, local electric field distortions caused by positive ion accumulation, and electron diffusion can all significantly impact the measured signal waveforms. This paper presents a measurement of the effective longitudinal electron diffusion coefficient, DL, in MicroBooNE at the nominal electric field strength of 273.9 V/cm. Historically, this measurement has been made in LArTPC prototype detectors. This represents the first measurement in a large-scale (85 tonne active volume) LArTPC operating in a neutrino beam. This is the largest dataset ever used for this measurement. Using a sample of ∼70,000 through-going cosmic ray muon tracks tagged with MicroBooNE's cosmic ray tagger system, we measure DL = 3.74+0.28 -0.29 cm2/s.

R. K. Neely | C.Thorpe | J. I. Crespo-Anadón | M. Convery | V. Radeka | K. Mason | J. Conrad | M. Murphy | A. Ereditato | G. Cerati | T. Bolton | M. Mooney | S. Gollapinni | J. Asaadi | H. Greenlee | W. Ketchum | M. Kirby | Y. Tsai | J. Zennamo | S. Wolbers | T. Yang | T. Usher | P. Spentzouris | M. Bishai | M. Rosenberg | D. Franco | B. Viren | W. Wu | M. Tutto | E. Church | R. Guenette | M. Wospakrik | R. Fine | L. Ren | G. Barr | G. Zeller | K. Mistry | S. Prince | M. Weber | H. Wei | O. Palamara | V. Paolone | R. Johnson | D. Naples | W. Seligman | L. Camilleri | G. Horton-Smith | M. Shaevitz | J. Spitz | K. Terao | M. Toups | S. Balasubramanian | C. Zhang | W. Louis | N. Tagg | S. Dytman | P. Guzowski | I. Kreslo | J. Nowak | J. Raaf | T. Strauss | T. Wongjirad | Y. Chen | W. Gu | X. Ji | B. Littlejohn | X. Qian | B. Baller | F. Cavanna | B. Fleming | C. James | G. Karagiorgi | C. Mariani | J. Marshall | C. Moore | Ž. Pavlović | L. Rochester | D. Schmitz | M. Soderberg | M. Stancari | A. Szelc | S. Soldner-Rembold | A. Blake | J. Evans | S. Berkman | S. Dennis | K. Duffy | A. Furmanski | P. Hamilton | J. H. Jo | I. Lepetic | A. Schukraft | R. An | N. Foppiani | E. Gramellini | C. Barnes | A. Hourlier | R. Sharankova | D. M. Caicedo | W. Tang | N. McConkey | B. Eberly | J. Mousseau | P. Green | S. Gardiner | A. Papadopoulou | V. Basque | D. Caratelli | I. C. Terrazas | R. Diurba | R. Fitzpatrick | D. Garcia-Gamez | G. Ge | O. Goodwin | R. Itay | L. Jiang | Y. Jwa | R. LaZur | A. Lister | X. Luo | A. Mastbaum | J. Mills | T. Mohayai | J. Moon | A. Moor | A. Paudel | A. Rafique | M. Reggiani-Guzzo | L. Rice | J. Rondon | H. Rogers | J. Sinclair | A. Smith | M. Nunes | D. Totani | M. Uchida | Z. Williams | R. Dorrill | P. Abratenko | J. Anthony | A. Ashkenazi | L. Bathe-Peters | A. Bhanderi | A. Bhat | D. Cianci | L. Cooper-Troendle | D. Devitt | E. Hall | O. Hen | N. Kamp | T. Kobilarcik | K. Li | Y. Li, | D. Marsden | V. Meddage | T. Mettler | K. Miller | A. Mogan | A. Navrer-Agasson | S. Pate | E. Piasetzky | I. Ponce-Pinto | M. Ross-Lonergan | G. Scanavini | E. Snider | J. S. John | K. Sutton | S. Sword-Fehlberg | G. Yarbrough | L. Yates | R. C. Fernández | W. V. D. Pontseele | O. Rodrigues | Vicky Papavassiliou | G. A. F. Aguirre | L. Hagaman | N. Kaneshige | K. Lin | K. Manivannan | L. Lepin | N. Wright | E. Yandel | Z. Pavlovic | Rui An | R. Neely | J. Conrad | J. John | Y. Li | J. Jo | K. Li | K. Li | J. Evans | C. Zhang | S. Pate

[1]  C.Thorpe,et al.  Measurement of space charge effects in the MicroBooNE LArTPC using cosmic muons , 2020, Journal of Instrumentation.

[2]  V. P. Luzio,et al.  Volume I. Introduction to DUNE , 2020, Journal of Instrumentation.

[3]  MicroBooNE collaboration C. Adams,et al.  Calibration of the charge and energy loss per unit length of the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber using muons and protons , 2019, Journal of Instrumentation.

[4]  MicroBooNE collaboration C. Adams,et al.  A method to determine the electric field of liquid argon time projection chambers using a UV laser system and its application in MicroBooNE , 2019, Journal of Instrumentation.

[5]  MicroBooNE collaboration C. Adams,et al.  Design and construction of the MicroBooNE Cosmic Ray Tagger system , 2019, Journal of Instrumentation.

[6]  C. D. Moore,et al.  Ionization electron signal processing in single phase LArTPCs. Part II. Data/simulation comparison and performance in MicroBooNE , 2018, Journal of Instrumentation.

[7]  C. D. Moore,et al.  Ionization electron signal processing in single phase LArTPCs. Part I. Algorithm Description and quantitative evaluation with MicroBooNE simulation , 2018, Journal of Instrumentation.

[8]  C. D. Moore,et al.  The Pandora multi-algorithm approach to automated pattern recognition of cosmic-ray muon and neutrino events in the MicroBooNE detector , 2017, The European Physical Journal C.

[9]  M. Torti Electron diffusion measurements in the ICARUS T600 detector , 2017 .

[10]  D. A. Wickremasinghe,et al.  Noise Characterization and Filtering in the MicroBooNE Liquid Argon TPC , 2017, 1705.07341.

[11]  C. D. Moore,et al.  Determination of muon momentum in the MicroBooNE LArTPC using an improved model of multiple Coulomb scattering , 2017, 1703.06187.

[12]  V. Meddage Electron attenuation measurement using cosmic ray muons at the MicroBooNE LArTPC , 2017, 1710.00396.

[13]  D. A. Wickremasinghe,et al.  Design and Construction of the MicroBooNE Detector , 2016, 1612.05824.

[14]  T. Warburton Simulations and data analysis for the 35 ton Liquid Argon detector as a prototype for the DUNE experiment , 2017 .

[15]  J. Joshi,et al.  Measurement of Longitudinal Electron Diffusion in Liquid Argon , 2015, 1508.07059.

[16]  N. Hasebe,et al.  Electron Mobility and Longitudinal Diffusion Coefficient in High-Density Gaseous Xenon , 2012 .

[17]  V. M. Atrazhev,et al.  Transport of electrons in atomic liquids in high electric fields , 1998 .

[18]  A. Rappoldi,et al.  Performance of a three-ton liquid argon time projection chamber , 1994 .

[19]  L. Christophorou,et al.  Electron transport measurements in methane using an improved pulsed Townsend technique , 1986 .

[20]  S. Kubota,et al.  Ratio of diffusion coefficient to mobility for electrons in liquid argon , 1979 .

[21]  R. Robson A Thermodynamic Treatment of Anisotropic Diffusion in an Electric Field , 1972 .

[22]  G. Wannier Motion of gaseous ions in strong electric fields , 1953 .