A Preparation for a Novel Way of Measuring Electron Spread in High Pressure Xenon Gas with an Optical TPC

A time projection chamber (TPC) is a particle detector used to track charged particles. It allows us to identify the trajectory of the particle, and measure their energy, which can be used to search for new physics such as neutrinoless double-beta decay. I will present a novel kind of TPC using cameras to collect UV light and image events. We used this detector to measure electron diffusion in high-pressure Xenon gas by drifting ionization electrons into the electroluminescence (EL) region and collecting UV light produced in this region with an EMCCD camera. To measure transverse diffusion, three Pb-210 needle sources were placed in the field cage at 4cm, 9cm, and 14cm away from the EL region in 10bar Xenon gas and images of the alpha tracks are taken in the EL region while varying the drift field.