Polyethylene naphthalate film as a wavelength shifter in liquid argon detectors

Understand

Liquid argon-based scintillation detectors are important for dark matter searches and neutrino physics.

• Argon scintillation light is in the vacuum ultraviolet region, making it hard to be detected by conventional means.
• Polyethylene naphthalate (PEN), an optically transparent thermoplastic polyester commercially available as large area sheets or rolls, is proposed as an alternative wavelength shifter to the commonly-used tetraphenyl butadiene (TPB).
• By combining the existing literature data and spectrometer measurements relative to TPB, we conclude that the fluorescence yield and timing of both materials may be very close.