Beam and radiation tests of a fast, warm liquid open-quotes swimming poolclose quotes calorimeter

A fast, warm liquid calorimeter module with lead absorber immersed in tetramethyl pentane (TMP) as the liquid medium (i.e. a open-quotes swimming poolclose quotes configuration) has been built and tested in a high energy beam at FNAL, and exposed to intense radiation from a strong Co60 source. A two-tower prototype, incorporating the concept of the electrostatic transformer for fast readout, exhibited very good uniformity and small cross-talk in the beam test. This same calorimeter was exposed to over 10 Mrad of radiation from the Co60 source, and the electron drift lifetime was measured as a function of accumulated dose. The lifetime improved significantly with small doses of radiation, up to a few hundred krad, then decreased gradually at higher doses, and extrapolated to a minimum useful lifetime of 0.1 μs at over 150 Mrad. This result was confirmed by measurements on a small single-electrode test cell which was irradiated to more than 25 Mrad. In this case, the lifetime decreased from 10μs to 0.1 μs when extrapolated to a dose of over 600 Mrad. This cell was also used to measure the effect of positive ion open-quotes space chargeclose quotes buildup under intense radiation. The results suggest that such effects are small even at the highest intensity available, about 1.3 Mrad/day, for applied fields ≥25 kV/cm