Liquid Argon Scintillation Light Quenching due to Nitrogen Impurities: Measurements performed for the MicroBooNE Vertical Slice Test

The neutrino experiment MicroBooNE is currently under construction. To expedite the physics output of MicroBooNE, a smaller version of its optical detection system has been implemented. To demonstrate full operability of this prototype, two physics measurements were performed. The first examines the number of scintillation light components, for although theory explains two components, other groups have seen evidence for a third. The second measures late light quenching as a function of nitrogen gas impurity concentration in the liquid argon. We find marginal evidence for a third component and further steps are identified to improve upon this study. Our late light quenching measurement also agrees with previously published results in the literature. These two measurements are useful not only from a detector development standpoint, but also for detector simulations. Thesis Supervisor: Janet M. Conrad Title: Professor of Physics, Department of Physics