Buoyancy-Driven Natural Convection of Liquid Helium in an Electron Bubble Chamber

A small liquid helium test chamber with 1.5 L active volume has been designed and constructed, to make the fundamental measurements of physical properties of electron bubble transports in liquid helium, aimed at developing a new cryogenic neutrino detector, using liquid helium as the detecting medium, for the detection of solar neutrinos. The test chamber is a double-walled cylindrical container equipped with five optical windows and ten high voltage cables. A LN2/LHe cryostat and a needle valve for vapor helium cooling are used to provide a 1.7∼4.5 K low temperature environments for the test chamber. One of key issues for the cryogenic design and experimental sensitivity of electron bubble tracking is that of keeping a thermally uniform liquid helium bath. The external heat loads to the chamber will generate a buoyancy-induced convection of liquid helium, which will carry the electron bubbles and accelerate or decelerate their transportation and therefore must be reduced to the minimum, so that the slow motion of the electron bubbles will not be confused by this effect. This paper will present the computational simulation and analysis on thermal convection and uniformity of the test chamber