Zhong-Hua Qin

Aging effect in the BESIII drift chamber

As the main tracking detector of BESIII, the drift chamber provides accurate measurements of the position and the momentum of the charged particles produced in e+e− collisions at BEPCII. After six years of operation, the drift chamber is suffering from aging problems due to huge beam-related background. The gains of the cells in the first ten layers show an obvious decrease, reaching a maximum decrease of about 29% for the first layer cells. Two calculation methods for the gain change (Bhabha events and accumulated charges with 0.3% aging ratio for inner chamber cells) give almost the same results. For the Malter effect encountered by the inner drift chamber in January 2012, about 0.2% water vapor was added to the MDC gas mixture to solve this cathode aging problem. These results provide an important reference for MDC operating high voltage settings and the upgrade of the inner drift chamber.

PMT overshoot study for the JUNO prototype detector

The quality of PMT signals is crucial for large-size and high-precision neutrino experiments, but most of these experiments are affected by the overshoot of PMT signals from the positive HV-single cable scheme. Overshoot affects the trigger, dead time and charge measurement from a detector. For the JUNO prototype detector, we have performed a detailed study and calculation on PMT signal overshoot to control the ratio of overshoot to signal amplitude to ~1%, with no effect on other PMT parameters.

Construction and cosmic-ray test of the new inner drift chamber for BESIII

A new inner drift chamber has been built which can replace the aged part of the BESIII drift chamber when needed. The design of the new inner drift chamber can minimize the ineffective area in the very forward and backward region and hence reduce the background event rate. With this design, the new inner drift chamber is expected to have a longer lifetime and improved performance due to the lower occupancy. The endplates and the cylinder were machined with high precision. Wire stringing was performed after the mechanical structure was assembled, and good quality of wire stringing was ensured by measurement of the tension and leakage current of the wires. After completion of the physical construction of the new chamber, a cosmic-ray test was carried out to test its performance. The results of the cosmic-ray test show that the new inner chamber achieves a spatial resolution of 127 μm and a dE/dx resolution of 6.4%, which satisfies the design specifications.

Signal Optimization with HV divider of MCP-PMT for JUNO

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is proposed to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy using a 20 kiloton underground liquid scintillator detector (CD). One of the keys is the energy resolution of the CD to reach <3% at 1 MeV, where totally 15,000 MCP-PMT will be used. The optimization of the 20-inch MCP-PMT is very important for better detection efficiency and stable performance. In this work, we will show the study to optimize the MCP-PMT working configuration for charge measurement. Particularly, the quality of PMT signal is another key for high-precision neutrino experiments while most of these experiments are affected by the overshoot of PMT signal from the positive HV scheme. The overshoot coupled with positive HV which is troubling trigger, dead time and precise charge measurement, we have studied to control it to less than 1% of signal amplitude for a better physics measurement. In this article, on the one hand, the optimized HV divider ratio will be presented here to improve its collection efficiency; on the other hand, we will introduce the method to reduce the ratio of overshoot from 10% to 1%.

Study of TTS for a 20-inch dynode PMT

The neutrino detector for the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) requires a large number of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), including 15000 MCP PMTs and 5000 dynode PMTs. The TTS (transit time spread) of the PMTs is very important for vertex and track reconstruction of the neutrinos in the detector. In this paper, we study the TTS of a 20-inch dynode PMT (R12860) from Hamamatsu for different high voltage, light intensity, light spot size and different photocathode regions. The impact from Earths magnetic field is also studied. The results achieved in this paper will be very useful for the JUNO experiment.

A new inner drift chamber for BESIII MDC

Due to the beam related background, the inner chamber of BESIII MDC has aging effect after 5 years running. The gains of the inner chamber cells decrease obviously, and the max gain decrease is about 26% for the first layer cells. A new inner drift chamber with eight stereo sense wire layers as a backup for MDC is under construction, which is almost the same as the current one but using stepped endplates to shorten the wire length beyond the effective solid angle. This new structure will be of benefit to reducing the counting rate of single cell. The manufacture of each component is going smoothly, and the new inner drift chamber will be finished by the end of April 2014.