Development of a semi-cylindrical time projection chamber prototype for ($$^{3}{\textrm{He}},t$$) charge exchange reaction experiment

Abstract

The charge exchange (CE) reaction is an effective probe to study the structure of atomic nuclei in the isospin dimension, which has been studied for decades. To expand the range of nuclei studied by CE reactions to a wider range and research the structure characteristics of unstable nuclei, including the isospin symmetry, spin-isospin excitation, and nuclear symmetry energy, a semi-cylindrical time projection chamber (scTPC) prototype was designed and constructed to probe ($$^{\textrm{3}}$$ 3 He,t) CE reactions in inverse kinematics. The 266 nm UV laser was used to achieve electron-drift-velocity calibration. The scTPC has an energy resolution (FWHM) of 5.6% for $$\alpha $$ α particles emitted by $$^{\textrm{241}}$$ 241 Am radioactive source. The position resolution of scTPC is described by the residual method. The spatial resolution on the pad plane is 409 $$\upmu $$ μ m. And the position resolution in the drift direction is 326 $$\upmu $$ μ m, equivalent to an angular resolution of 0.4$$^\circ $$ ∘ . These performances suggest that the scTPC can measure $$\Delta E $$ Δ E and particle tracks precisely. The successful development of the scTPC prototype provides better conditions for the next step of experimental data analysis and processing.