Photosensitive gaseous detectors for cryogenic temperature applications

There are several proposals and projects today for building LXe time projection chambers (TPCs) for dark matter search. Important elements of these TPCs are the photomultipliers operating either inside LXe or in vapours above the liquid.We have recently demonstrated that photosensitive gaseous detectors (wire type and hole type) can operate perfectly well, until temperatures of LN2. In this paper, results of systematic studies of operation of the photosensitive version of these detectors (combined with reflective or semi-transparent CsI photocathodes) in the temperature interval of 300–150 K are presented. In particular, it was demonstrated that both sealed and flushed by a gas detectors could operate at a quite stable fashion in a year/time scale. Obtained results strongly indicate that they can be cheap and simple alternatives to photomultipliers or avalanche solid-state detectors in LXe TPC applications.