TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gasik, Piotr
AU  - Lautner, Lukas
AU  - Fabbietti, Laura
AU  - Fribert, Henrik
AU  - Klemenz, Thomas
AU  - Mathis, Andreas
AU  - Ulukutlu, Berkin
AU  - Waldmann, Tobias
TI  - Systematic investigation of critical charge limits in Thick GEMs
JO  - Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research / A
VL  - 1047
IS  - arXiv:2204.02853
SN  - 0167-5087
CY  - Amsterdam
PB  - North-Holland Publ. Co.
M1  - GSI-2023-00333
M1  - arXiv:2204.02853
SP  - 167730
PY  - 2023
N1  - ccby4, grant number DFG FA 898/5-1
AB  - We present discharge probability studies performed with a single Thick Gas Electron Multiplier (THGEM) irradiated with alpha particles in Ar-CO<sub>2</sub> and Ne-CO<sub>2</sub> mixtures. We observe a clear dependency of the discharge stability on the noble gas and quencher content pointing to lighter gases being more stable against the development of streamer discharges. A detailed comparison of the measurements with Geant4 simulations allowed us to extract the critical charge value leading to the formation of a spark in a THGEM hole, which is found to be within the range of 3-7×10<sup>6</sup> electrons, depending on the gas mixture.Our experimental findings are compared to previous GEM results. We show that the discharge probability of THGEMs exceeds the one measured with GEMs by orders of magnitude. This can be explained with simple geometrical considerations, where primary ionization is collected by a lower number of holes available in a THGEM structure, reaching higher primary charge densities and thus increasing the probability of a spark occurrence. However, we show that the critical charge limits are similar for both amplification structures.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000918723200003
DO  - DOI:10.1016/j.nima.2022.167730
UR  - https://repository.gsi.de/record/276724
ER  -