A Study on the Performance of a Xe+20%Ar Proportional Counter at 2atm Pressure

This study is the first stage of an investigation on the possibility of building an efficient imaging Xe-based gas detector for medium and high energy x-rays. The performance of a single wire proportional counter filled with Xe+20%Ar at 2atm pressure was studied experimentally and by means of a computer simulation using MCNP code. Other Xe-based gas mixtures were also tested to select those with the best performance to be investigated further.