Developing a silica aerogel radiator for the HELIX ring-imaging Cherenkov system
NUCLEAR INSTRUMENTS & METHODS IN PHYSICS RESEARCH SECTION A-ACCELERATORS SPECTROMETERS DETECTORS AND ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT(2020)
Abstract
This paper reports the successful fabrication of silica aerogel Cherenkov radiators produced in the first batches from a 96-tile mass production performed using pin-drying technique in our laboratory. The aerogels are to be used in a ring-imaging Cherenkov detector in the spectrometer of a planned balloon-borne cosmic-ray observation program, HELIX (High Energy Light Isotope eXperiment). A total of 36 transparent, hydrophobic aerogel tiles with a high refractive index of 1.16 and dimensions of 10 cm x 10 cm x 1 cm will be chosen as the flight radiators. Thus far, 40 out of the 48 tiles fabricated were confirmed as having no tile cracking. In the first screening, 8 out of the first 16 tiles were accepted as flight-qualified candidates, based on basic optical measurement results. To fit the aerogel tiles into a radiator support structure, the trimming of previously manufactured prototype tiles using a water-jet cutting device was successful.
MoreTranslated text
Key words
Silica aerogel radiator,Ring-imaging Cherenkov detector,High refractive index,Pin drying,Particle identification,HELIX
AI Read Science
Must-Reading Tree
Example
![](https://originalfileserver.aminer.cn/sys/aminer/pubs/mrt_preview.jpeg)
Generate MRT to find the research sequence of this paper
Chat Paper
Summary is being generated by the instructions you defined