We report on a measurement of the absorption length of scintillation light in
liquid argon due to dissolved nitrogen at the part-per-million (ppm) level. We
inject controlled quantities of nitrogen into a high purity volume of liquid
argon and monitor the light yield from an alpha source. The source is placed at
different distances from a cryogenic photomultiplier tube assembly. By
comparing the light yield from each position we extract the absorption cross
section of nitrogen. We find that nitrogen absorbs argon scintillation light
with strength of (1.51±0.15)×10−4cm−1ppm−1,
corresponding to an absorption cross section of (7.14±0.74)×10−21cm2molecule−1. We obtain the relationship
between absorption length and nitrogen concentration over the 0 to 50 ppm range
and discuss the implications for the design and data analysis of future large
liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) detectors. Our results indicate
that for a current-generation LArTPC, where a concentration of 2 parts per
million of nitrogen is expected, the attenuation length due to nitrogen will be
30±3 meters.Comment: v2: Correct mistake in molecular absorption cross section
calculation, and a minor typo in fig