High Efficiency Detection of Argon Scintillation Light of 128nm Using LAAPDs

The possibility of efficient collection and detection of vacuum ultraviolet light as emitted by argon, krypton, and xenon gas is studied. Absolute quantum efficiencies of large area avalanche photodiodes (LAAPDs) are derived at these wavelengths. VUV light of wavelengths down to the 128nm of Ar emission is shown to be detectable with silicon avalanche photodiodes at quantum efficiencies above 42%. Flexible Mylar foil overcoated with Al+MgF$_2$ is measured to have a specular reflectivity of $\sim$91% at argon emission wavelength. Low-pressure argon gas is shown to emit significant amounts of non-UV radiation. The average energy expenditure for the creation of non-UV photons in argon gas at this pressure is measured to be below 378 eV.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Talk given at IEEE 2005 Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, Puerto Ric

Kosterlitz-Thouless Universality in a Fermionic System

A new extension of the attractive Hubbard model is constructed to study the critical behavior near a finite temperature superconducting phase transition in two dimensions using the recently developed meron-cluster algorithm. Unlike previous calculations in the attractive Hubbard model which were limited to small lattices, the new algorithm is used to study the critical behavior on lattices as large as $128\times 128$. These precise results for the first time show that a fermionic system can undergo a finite temperature phase transition whose critical behavior is well described by the predictions of Kosterlitz and Thouless almost three decades ago. In particular it is confirmed that the spatial winding number susceptibility obeys the well known predictions of finite size scaling for $T<T_c$ and up to logarithmic corrections the pair susceptibility scales as $L^{2-\eta}$ at large volumes with $0\leq\eta\leq 0.25$ for $0\leq T\leq T_c$.Comment: Revtex format; 4 pages, 2 figure

Topological Phases in Neuberger-Dirac operator

The response of the Neuberger-Dirac fermion operator D=\Id + V in the topologically nontrivial background gauge field depends on the negative mass parameter $m_0$ in the Wilson-Dirac fermion operator $D_w$ which enters $D$ through the unitary operator $V = D_w (D_w^{\dagger} D_w)^{-1/2}$. We classify the topological phases of $D$ by comparing its index to the topological charge of the smooth background gauge field. An exact discrete symmetry in the topological phase diagram is proved for any gauge configurations. A formula for the index of D in each topological phase is derived by obtaining the total chiral charge of the zero modes in the exact solution of the free fermion propagator.Comment: 27 pages, Latex, 3 figures, appendix A has been revise

Luminescence quenching of the triplet excimer state by air traces in gaseous argon

While developing a liquid argon detector for dark matter searches we investigate the influence of air contamination on the VUV scintillation yield in gaseous argon at atmospheric pressure. We determine with a radioactive alpha-source the photon yield for various partial air pressures and different reflectors and wavelength shifters. We find for the fast scintillation component a time constant tau1= 11.3 +- 2.8 ns, independent of gas purity. However, the decay time of the slow component depends on gas purity and is a good indicator for the total VUV light yield. This dependence is attributed to impurities destroying the long-lived argon excimer states. The population ratio between the slowly and the fast decaying excimer states is determined for alpha-particles to be 5.5 +-0.6 in argon gas at 1100 mbar and room temperature. The measured mean life of the slow component is tau2 = 3.140 +- 0.067 microsec at a partial air pressure of 2 x 10-6 mbar.Comment: 7 pages submitted to NIM

Landau-Ginsberg Theory of Quark Confinement

We describe the SU(3) deconfinement transition using Landau-Ginsberg theory. Drawing on perturbation theory and symmetry principles, we construct the free energy as a function of temperature and the Polyakov loop. Once the two adjustable parameters of the model are fixed, the pressure p, energy epsilon and Polyakov loop expectation value P_F are calculable functions of temperature. An excellent fit to the continuum extrapolation of lattice thermodynamics data can be achieved. In an extended form of the model, the glueball potential is responsible for breaking scale invariance at low temperatures. Three parameters are required, but the glueball mass and the gluon condensate are calculable functions of temperature, along with p, epsilon and P_F.Comment: Lattice99(Finite Temperature and Density) <= added keywords only change in revised version, sorry; 3 pages, LaTeX with espcrc2.sty and epsf.tex. Talk presented at Lattice99, Pisa, 29 June - 3 July 1999, to appear in Nucl. Phys. B (Proc.Suppl.

Anomaly Cancellation in 2+1 dimensions in the presence of a domainwall mass

A Fermion in 2+1 dimensions, with a mass function which depends on one spatial coordinate and passes through a zero ( a domain wall mass), is considered. In this model, originally proposed by Callan and Harvey, the gauge variation of the effective gauge action mainly consists of two terms. One comes from the induced Chern-Simons term and the other from the chiral fermions, bound to the 1+1 dimensional wall, and they are expected to cancel each other. Though there exist arguments in favour of this, based on the possible forms of the effective action valid far from the wall and some facts about theories of chiral fermions in 1+1 dimensions, a complete calculation is lacking. In this paper we present an explicit calculation of this cancellation at one loop valid even close to the wall. We show that, integrating out the ``massive'' modes of the theory does produce the Chern-Simons term, as appreciated previously. In addition we show that it generates a term that softens the high energy behaviour of the 1+1 dimensional effective chiral theory thereby resolving an ambiguity present in a general 1+1 dimensional theory.Comment: 17 pages, LaTex file, CU-TP-61

Characterization of the Hamamatsu S8664 Avalanche Photodiode for X-Ray and VUV-light detection

We present the first operation of the Avalanche Photodiode (APD) from Hamamatsu to xenon scintillation light and to direct X-rays of 22.1 keV and 5.9 keV. A large non-linear response was observed for the direct X-ray detection. At 415 V APD bias voltage it was of about 30 % for 22.1 keV and about 45 % for 5.9 keV. The quantum efficiency for 172 nm photons has been measured to be 69 +/- 15 %.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Elsevie