• Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars

May 6, 2025 2:00 PM
PAIS 3205

Host:

Dinesh Loomba

Presenter:

Dustin Edgeman (UNM)

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Since its invention 50 years ago, the time projection chamber (TPC) has become a workhorse in experiments used in particle and nuclear physics. Its ability to resolve low energy particle tracks have made it ideal for rare event searches, especially where directionality is required. In this talk I will briefly describe how the TPC is used in some of these searches before focusing on the MIGDAL experiment. The MIGDAL TPC uses an optical readout consisting of a CMOS camera/lens system coupled to a gas electron multiplier (GEM), which produces scintillation light used to reconstruct particle tracks. When compared with simulations, MIGDAL observed an increase in both the intensity and size of particle tracks, which we attributed to optical effects in the GEM. I will describe the experiments I performed to test this hypothesis and show their results and impact on the MIGDAL experiment.