A study of the electron image due to ionizing events in a two-dimensional liquid argon TPC with a 24 cm drift gap

We have tested a liquid argon time projection chamber with a novel wire configuration based on electrostatic focussing which allows the realization of a nondestructive detection of the electron image produced by ionizing events. The chamber was tested in a 5 GeV pion beam at the CERN proton synchrotron. The measured pulse shapes at both 200 V/cm and 500 V/cm were in very good agreement with the expected shapes, calculated taking into account the electron lifetime, the response of the electronics and the longitudinal diffusion of the electron cloud. The measured electron drift velocity was in good agreement with the results of other workers as well as with our previous measurements. We have also analysed a sample of events containing delta rays in order to study the behaviour of low-energy electrons in the liquid argon. We find that for electron energies greater than 5 MeV the measured energy spectrum agrees very well with the predicted spectrum after corrections for acceptance and energy loss, hence demonstrating the feasibility of recognizing low-energy electrons in liquid argon.