Narrow Results

In the present paper, we report on our developments of liquid xenon detectors for medical imaging, positron emission tomography and single photon imaging, in particular. The results of the studies of several photon detectors (photomultiplier tubes and large area avalanche photodiode) suitable for detection of xenon scintillation are also briefly described.

A study of the temperature dependence of nitrogen fluorescence is presented. Preliminary measurements of the light yield for the 0-0 band of 2^nd positive system (centred at 337.1 nm) at different gas densities were performed using alpha particles as excitation source.

In this paper we describe our recent results on the study of avalanche photodiodes for detection of scintillation of liquid xenon, namely measurements of very low intensity light pulses and the photodiode excess noise as a function of temperature. Some other aspects relevant to the use of liquid xenon scintillation for particle detection are also addressed. In particular, we refer our measurements of the refraction index and attenuation length of the liquid for the VUV light emitted by xenon, which were found to be 1.69±0.02 and 36.4±1.8 cm, respectively.