Speaker
Description
It has been known that noble elements, when excited by ionizing radiation, emit light not only in the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) region but also at longer wavelengths, up to the near-infrared (NIR). Many questions remain on the exact nature of this scintillation both in terms of its atomic/molecular origin as well as its full characterization as regards the light yield, spectral and time structure. In this contribution we report results from a dedicated experiment in gaseous and liquid argon, sensitive to both the VUV as well as the non-VUV light, which addresses some of these questions. Our experimental setup houses an Am241 alpha source and employs four SiPMs with different spectral sensitivities which together cover a wide spectral region from the VUV to the NIR, in an arrangement that is compact and impervious to stray light.
