Direct comparison of high voltage breakdown measurements in liquid argon and liquid xenon

D. N. McKinsey; E. P. Bernard; G. Richardson; J. Watson; K. O'Sullivan; L. Tvrznikova; Q. Riffard; S. Kravitz; W. L. Waldron

REVIEW 3 major objections 5 minor 69 references

Direct comparison of high voltage breakdown measurements in liquid argon and liquid xenon

T0 review · 3 major / 5 minor · reviewed 2026-08-14 · deepseek-v4-flash

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Pith's one-line read This paper finds that liquid argon and liquid xenon break down at comparable fields in the same cryogenic chamber, with both following a power-law dependence on electrode area.

desk verdict Useful first same-apparatus LAr/LXe breakdown dataset, but the headline 'comparable' claim is qualitative and the area-scaling fit is confounded by changing the gap. read the letter →

arxiv 1908.06888 v3 pith:VZ7IB6U4 submitted 2019-08-19 physics.ins-det hep-ex

L. Tvrznikova , E. P. Bernard , S. Kravitz , K. O'Sullivan , G. Richardson , Q. Riffard , W. L. Waldron , J. Watson

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D. N. McKinsey

This is my paper · ORCID

classification physics.ins-dethep-ex

keywords liquidargonxenondielectricbreakdownhighvoltagestressedelectrodeareascalingWeibulldistributiontimeprojectionchamber

verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

The pith

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The reading

The paper sets out to measure DC dielectric breakdown in liquid argon and liquid xenon under identical conditions, and to see whether the breakdown threshold follows a predictable scaling with electrode size. Using the XeBrA cryogenic chamber with Rogowski-profiled electrodes, it varies the cathode–anode gap from 1 to 6 mm, which sweeps the stressed cathode area from 11 to 33 square centimeters at voltages up to 75 kV. The central result is that, in this same apparatus, liquid argon and liquid xenon break down at comparable electric fields, and in both liquids the median breakdown field falls with stressed area as a power law, $E_m = C A^{-b}$, with fitted exponents $b$ around 0.13–0.22. This matters for the design of noble-liquid time projection chambers, where designers need to know how much high voltage a large electrode can safely hold; a common area-scaling rule, backed by a Weibull weakest-link model, gives them that margin.

What carries the argument

The central object is the stressed electrode area (SEA), defined as the cathode area where the electric field exceeds 90% of the maximum field, computed with a finite-element simulation of the profiled electrode geometry. The argument is carried by the Weibull weakest-link model: an electrode of area $A$ is treated as many independent surface elements, each surviving field $E$ with probability $\exp[-(E/\epsilon)^k]$; setting the overall survival probability to $1/2$ yields the scaling identity $E_m(A) = C A^{-b}$ with $b=1/k$. This identity turns collections of breakdown voltages into a prediction for how the breakdown field changes with electrode size, and it provides the consistency check between the fitted distribution shape $k$ and the empirical area exponent $b$ that runs through the analysis.

What would settle it

Measure breakdown fields with two electrode geometries that have the identical 90% stressed area but different gap lengths (for instance, profiled electrodes of different diameters). If the median breakdown field changes with the gap rather than remaining set by area, the power-law-in-area claim is refuted.

Watch

Extended reading notes

Core claim

On its own terms, the paper’s discovery is that the dielectric strength of liquid xenon is not markedly different from that of liquid argon when both are measured with the same electrodes, same chamber, and comparable purity: the XeBrA data at 2 bar for the two liquids overlap, and the fitted area-scaling parameters are close. In xenon, a fit to $E_m = C(A/\mathrm{cm}^2)^{-b}$ over XeBrA Runs 2 and 3 plus one independent point gives $C = 171\pm8$ kV/cm and $b = 0.13\pm0.02$; in argon, combining prior literature with XeBrA data gives $b=0.22$ over a stressed-area range spanning roughly four orders of magnitude. A histogram of xenon breakdown voltages at a 1 mm gap is well described by a two-parameter Weibull distribution with shape parameter $k=9.2\pm0.2$, consistent within $2\sigma$ with $k=1/b=7.7\pm1.2$ extracted from area scaling. This consistency ties the empirical power law to the weakest-link model and makes the area scaling appear to be a physical effect rather than a fitting artifact.

Load-bearing premise

The measurements assume that the stressed electrode area—not the gap length, the liquid volume under stress, or the stored capacitive energy that changes with it—is what actually controls the breakdown field.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

Noble-liquid TPC designers can use the same area-scaling functional form to estimate high-voltage safety margins in both liquid argon and liquid xenon, rather than relying on separate empirical curves.
The fitted scaling predicts that a large cathode with a stressed area around $500\,\mathrm{cm}^2$ at 100 kV operates roughly a factor of three below the expected breakdown field, giving a concrete margin for detector design.
Since the Weibull shape parameter from fixed-gap breakdown distributions agrees with the reciprocal of the area-scaling exponent, the weakest-link model is a viable framework for extrapolating breakdown statistics to untested electrode sizes.
Leakage currents below 50 fA in argon and 5 fA in xenon showed no dependence on cathode voltage, a result that constrains steady pre-breakdown emission mechanisms in both liquids.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

Because the paper changes electrode separation to change stressed area, gap length, stressed liquid volume, and stored energy all move together; a dedicated geometry that holds stressed area fixed while varying the gap would determine whether the fitted $b$ is really an area exponent or a proxy for one of these correlated quantities.
The model’s prediction that the Weibull shape parameter $k$ is independent of area could be tested with larger breakdown samples at several fixed areas; the paper’s fitted $k$ values at 1, 1.4, and 2 mm gaps are mutually consistent within their errors but cannot yet confirm area-independence.
If the area exponent is a property of the liquid rather than the electrode geometry, repeating the same measurement in liquid neon or liquid helium would reveal whether $b$ tracks dielectric properties or stays near the argon and xenon values.

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Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, and a circularity audit.

Desk Editor's Note

read the letter

The thing worth knowing about this paper is that it delivers a genuinely new dataset: the first same-apparatus, same-electrode comparison of dielectric breakdown in liquid argon and liquid xenon, at stressed areas up to 33 cm². That is a real contribution for anyone designing HV systems in noble-liquid TPCs. The systematic error treatment is careful, the purity monitoring is documented, and the authors are honest about several limitations, including that area and volume effects are hard to separate. The Weibull fits at fixed gap are a reasonable internal consistency check, not independent validation.

The soft spots are real but not disqualifying. The 'comparable behavior' claim in the abstract and Section 3.3 rests on eyeballing Figure 9. No statistical test, no error bars on that figure, no quantitative statement about what 'comparable' means. That should be fixed before publication. More importantly, the area-scaling exponent b is inferred by varying electrode separation while the stressed area changes along with gap length, stressed volume, and stored energy. The paper itself flags this in Section 1. The stress-test note is correct: Equation (1.5) assumes area varies with other conditions fixed, and that precondition is not met here. The poor combined LAr fit (χ²/DOF ≈ 3900) reinforces that the power law is a rough empirical trend across different experiments, not a precise predictive law. Extrapolating to 500 cm² LZ cathode rings is optimistic.

Having said that, the LAr-versus-LXe comparison is less vulnerable, because both liquids share the same geometry ladder; a gap/volume confound affects them similarly. The raw breakdown values, the ramp procedures, and the systematic uncertainties are all plausible. I believe the dataset is solid and useful even if the interpretive claims outrun the evidence.

Who gets value: experimentalists working on noble-liquid TPC high-voltage design, and people studying dielectric breakdown in cryogenic liquids. A serious referee should engage with this; it is not a desk reject. The revision should add a quantitative LAr/LXe comparison (e.g., ratio of medians with uncertainties), error bars on Figure 9, and an explicit statement that the area-scaling exponent is degenerate with gap/volume/capacitance effects in this apparatus. With those changes, the paper would be a solid JINST contribution.

Referee Report

3 major / 5 minor

Summary. The paper reports DC high-voltage breakdown measurements in liquid argon and liquid xenon using the XeBrA apparatus, which employs large Rogowski electrodes with stressed areas from 11.2 to 32.6 cm² and gaps from 1 to 6 mm. The authors observe a power-law decrease of the breakdown field with stressed electrode area, fit as E_m = C A^{-b}, with exponents b ≈ 0.13–0.22 for LXe and b ≈ 0.11–0.31 for LAr, and they report that the breakdown behavior of the two liquids is "comparable" when measured in the same apparatus. They also fit a Weibull distribution to LXe breakdown histograms and compare the fitted shape parameter with the inverse of the area-scaling exponent as a test of the weakest-link model. The paper concludes that the results support an area-scaling effect and are encouraging for large noble-liquid TPCs, though it acknowledges that further data are needed to confirm the Weibull interpretation.

Significance. This work provides a useful first direct comparison of high-voltage breakdown in LAr and LXe under identical electrode geometry, and it extends stress-area measurements beyond the 3 cm² previously studied in LAr. If the area-scaling law were cleanly established, it would give TPC designers a practical extrapolation rule; the same-apparatus comparison is a legitimate experimental contribution. The paper is also careful to tabulate systematic errors and to describe conditioning and purity effects. The main value is the dataset and the direct LAr/LXe comparison, which is less sensitive to the geometric confounding discussed below because both liquids share the same electrode pair.

major comments (3)

[§2.2/Table 2 and §3.1–3.2, Figs. 6–8] The area-scaling exponent b is extracted from data in which stressed area A, gap distance d, and stressed volume V are co-varied: the same electrode pair is used and the separation is changed from 1 to 6 mm, giving A = 11.2–32.6 cm². The paper itself notes in §1 that "unless the tested geometries are very different, the area and volume effects are hard to distinguish." Because only one electrode geometry was used, the fitted power law E_m = C A^{-b} cannot be uniquely attributed to an area effect; a gap-length or stressed-volume dependence would produce the same trend. Consequently, the extrapolation to the LZ cathode ring at 500 cm² (end of §3.2) is not supported by the data as presented. The authors should either re-analyze the data with an explicit model separating area, gap, and volume dependence, or reframe the claim as a combined geometric scaling and add a clear caveat about extrapolation.
[§3.1, Fig. 6] The combined area-scaling fit to LAr data reports χ² = 5×10^5 for 129 degrees of freedom, i.e., χ²/DOF ≈ 3900, with fitted parameters C = 124.26 ± 0.09 kV/cm and b = 0.2214 ± 0.0002. This enormous reduced chi-squared, combined with the unrealistically small quoted uncertainties, indicates that the single power law does not describe the combined dataset. The manuscript does not discuss this goodness-of-fit failure, yet §5 states that the results "further validated the existence of an area scaling effect." The authors should reconcile this statement with the reported fit quality, for example by including systematic uncertainties in the chi-squared calculation or by restricting the fit to comparable geometries and reporting the fit probability.
[§3.3, Fig. 9] The headline claim that "there does not appear to be a significant difference between breakdown behavior in LXe and LAr" (abstract and §3.3) is not supported by any statistical test or by error bars on the comparison figure. A quantitative comparison, such as a two-sample test of the breakdown-field distributions at matched separations or a combined-uncertainty interval on the ratio of mean breakdown fields, is needed to substantiate the "comparable" claim. Without this, the claim is only qualitative and is not commensurate with the paper's otherwise careful error treatment.

minor comments (5)

[§3.4] The statement that the fitted Weibull k values "are within 2σ of each other and of that obtained from the area scaling" is not supported by the quoted uncertainties: for the 2 mm separation k = 12.8 ± 1.8 versus the area-scaling k = 7.7 ± 1.2, the difference is about 2.4σ. This should be checked and reworded.
[§3.4, Fig. 10] The caption states that the Weibull fit has χ² = 99.8 with 63 degrees of freedom, giving a p-value of roughly 0.002; the text should comment on this goodness of fit rather than implying the distribution is well described.
[§2.2] The sentence "The detector was not assembled in a clean room and specks of dust were sometimes visible on the electrode surfaces" is a potentially important systematic limitation; the authors should state explicitly how this could affect the breakdown field values and whether any dust-related events were excluded.
[Fig. 6] The axis label "10□3 10□2 10□1 100 101 102" appears garbled in the manuscript text and should be rendered with proper superscripts in the final version.
[Table 3] The first column header "∆separa-tion" contains an awkward line break and should be cleaned up; also, define DOF when it is first used in the text.

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged · score 0.0 of 10

No circularity: area scaling and Weibull fits are empirical, and the LZ estimate is an extrapolation of the fitted curve, not a circular prediction.

full rationale

The paper does not contain a circular derivation. The Weibull weakest-link model is imported from the external literature (Weibull 1939, Fisher-Tippett) and used only as a fitting framework; no result is derived from its own output. The central area-scaling law E_m = C A^{-b} is obtained by fitting equation (1.5) to breakdown-field measurements from XeBrA and from independent experiments (FNAL, LHEP, SLAC); the LZ projection is an extrapolation of that fitted curve to a 500 cm^2 area, not a refit of LZ data, so it is not a fitted input renamed as a prediction. The Weibull shape-parameter comparison (k = 9.2 +/- 0.2 at 1 mm versus k = 1/b = 7.7 +/- 1.2 from area scaling) is an internal consistency check between two different aspects of the same data, not a circular step. The acknowledged correlation between electrode separation and stressed area, stated in Section 1 as 'unless the tested geometries are very different, the area and volume effects are hard to distinguish,' is a confounding and validity limitation for the area-scaling interpretation, but it is not a self-referential or definitional reduction: the paper does not define stressed area in terms of the predicted breakdown field, and the SEA is determined geometrically from COMSOL field simulations. The only self-citation, reference [58] to the first author's PhD thesis, appears as a pointer for purity-monitor details and an auxiliary volume-effect study, and it does not carry any load-bearing argument. Hence no circular step is present.

Assumptions & free parameters 12 free parameters · 6 assumptions · 0 invented entities

The central empirical claims rest on fitted power-law constants (C, b) and Weibull parameters (k, lambda) rather than on first-principles theory. The weakest-link model supplies the functional form, and the stressed-area definition plus COMSOL field map supply the independent variable. No new physical entities are introduced.

free parameters (12)

C_LAr combined fit scale = 124.26 ± 0.09 kV/cm
Scale constant in the power-law fit E_m = C (A/cm^2)^(-b) to combined LAr data in Figure 6. Fitted to data, not derived.
b_LAr combined fit exponent = 0.2214 ± 0.0002
Area-scaling exponent in the combined LAr fit, Figure 6. Fitted to data and absorbs uncontrolled geometry, purity, and pressure differences.
C_LAr 1.5 bar = 216 ± 103 kV/cm
Scale constant for LAr at 1.5 bar, Figure 7. Fitted to data.
b_LAr 1.5 bar = 0.31 ± 0.16
Area exponent for LAr at 1.5 bar, Figure 7. Fitted with large uncertainty.
C_LAr 2 bar = 147 ± 54 kV/cm
Scale constant for LAr at 2 bar, Figure 7. Fitted to data.
b_LAr 2 bar = 0.11 ± 0.12
Area exponent for LAr at 2 bar, Figure 7. Fitted and consistent with zero.
C_LXe = 171 ± 8 kV/cm
Scale constant for combined LXe data including the SLAC point, Figure 8. Fitted to data.
b_LXe = 0.13 ± 0.02
Area exponent for LXe, Figure 8. Fitted to data.
k_Weibull LXe Run 3 1 mm = 9.2 ± 0.2
Weibull shape parameter fitted to the LXe Run 3 breakdown distribution at 1 mm separation, Figure 10.
lambda_Weibull LXe Run 3 1 mm = 10.10 ± 0.03 kV/cm
Weibull scale parameter fitted to LXe Run 3 at 1 mm separation, Figure 10.
k_Weibull LXe Run 3 1.4 mm = 8.2 ± 0.9
Weibull shape parameter fitted to LXe Run 3 at 1.4 mm separation.
k_Weibull LXe Run 3 2 mm = 12.8 ± 1.8
Weibull shape parameter fitted to LXe Run 3 at 2 mm separation.

assumptions (6)

domain assumption Weakest-link Weibull model: an electrode surface is composed of independent elements whose survival probability follows S0(E) = exp[-(E/epsilon)^k].
Invoked in Section 1.1, equations (1.1)-(1.3). This statistical model converts measured breakdown distributions into the area-scaling law E_m = C A^(-1/k); it is assumed rather than derived from breakdown physics.
standard math Fisher-Tippett extreme value theory identifies the Weibull distribution as one of the three limiting distributions for weakest-link failure.
Used in Section 1.1 to justify the Weibull form. This is a standard result from extreme value theory.
domain assumption Breakdown is surface-initiated on the stressed cathode area defined as the region where the electric field exceeds 90% of its maximum value.
Section 2.2 defines stressed electrode area (SEA) by the 90% field contour from COMSOL. The paper assumes breakdown probability scales with this area and that sparks are cathode-initiated, as stated in Section 3 and Figure 5.
domain assumption COMSOL electric field simulations with dielectric constants epsilon_LXe = 1.85 and epsilon_alumina = 9.4 correctly model the electrode geometry and yield accurate stressed areas.
Section 2.1 and Figure 3. All stressed-area values used in fits come from these simulations, with no experimental verification of the field map.
domain assumption Changing electrode separation changes the stressed area while leaving other breakdown-relevant parameters, such as gap length, stressed volume, field uniformity, and stored energy, either negligible or properly accounted for.
Section 2.2 and Section 3.1. This is the load-bearing confounding assumption. The paper acknowledges that area and volume effects are hard to distinguish in Section 1.
domain assumption Purity and pressure differences among LAr and LXe runs do not dominate the LAr-LXe comparison.
Table 2 shows LAr at 1.5-2 bar with about 1 ppb O2-equivalent impurities, LXe Run 2 at about 200 ppm O2, and LXe Run 3 at 200 ppb O2-equivalent. The paper states that no purity dependence was observed, but the comparison across such different levels is not quantitatively controlled.

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Pith. "Pith review of Direct comparison of high voltage breakdown measurements in liquid argon and liquid xenon." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/VZ7IB6U4

@misc{pith2026190806888,
  author       = {Pith},
  title        = {Pith review of: Direct comparison of high voltage breakdown measurements in liquid argon and liquid xenon},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/VZ7IB6U4}},
  note         = {Machine review of arXiv:1908.06888}
}

abstract

As noble liquid time projection chambers grow in size their high voltage requirements increase, and detailed, reproducible studies of dielectric breakdown and the onset of electroluminescence are needed to inform their design. The Xenon Breakdown Apparatus (XeBrA) is a 5-liter cryogenic chamber built to characterize the DC high voltage breakdown behavior of liquid xenon and liquid argon. Electrodes with areas up to 33~cm$^2$ were tested while varying the cathode-anode separation from 1 to 6~mm with a voltage difference up to 75~kV. A power-law relationship between breakdown field and electrode area was observed. The breakdown behavior of liquid argon and liquid xenon within the same experimental apparatus was comparable.

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