A study on the wall effect of the Spherical Proportional Counter for long-range particle detection

Abstract

The Spherical Proportional Counter is a large-volume gaseous detector that finds application in many fields, like α, β, γ radiation detection, neutrino detection and Dark Matter research. When a reaction happens close to the detector wall it is possible for the produced particles to hit the wall and lose energy. This is known as the wall effect and it leads to wrong calculations of the incident particle energy. It depends on the particles’ range and the detector characteristics, such as its size and the gas pressure. In this work, a study has been done in order to quantify the wall effect for the SPC, for any application. We used neutron beams, which cover the total volume of the sphere and interact with the gas nuclei, giving several reactions. The presented data derive from simulations on GEANT4 and are in agreement with the experimental data from neutron beams of the TANDEM Accelerator Laboratory, NCSR Demokritos.