A giant argon bubble chamber with long sensitive time for nucleon decay experiments

Abstract

A giant argon bubble chamber could be a suitable detector to investigate the decay modes of nucleons in an unbiased way. We are investigating the possibility of operating such a chamber with a track sensitive duty cycle of up to ∼ 50%. A small and not very clean bubble chamber has been successfully operated in an expanded pressure stabilized mode with a duty cycle of 10%. A tentative design of a 3000 m³ argon bubble chamber is discussed.