  Xenon is a widely used detector target material due to its excellent
scintillation properties in the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum. The additional use
of infrared (IR) scintillation light could improve future detectors. However, a
comprehensive characterization of the IR component is necessary to explore its
potential. We report on the first measurement of the time profile of the IR
scintillation response of gaseous xenon. Our setup consists of a gaseous xenon
target irradiated by an alpha particle source and is instrumented with one IR-
and two UV-sensitive photomultiplier tubes. Thereby, it enables IR timing
measurements with nanosecond resolution and simultaneous measurement of UV and
IR signals. We find that the IR light yield is in the same order of magnitude
as the UV yield. We observe that the IR pulses can be described by a fast and a
slow component and demonstrate that the size of the slow component decreases
with increasing levels of impurities in the gas. Moreover, we study the IR
emission as a function of pressure. These findings confirm earlier observations
and advance our understanding of the IR scintillation response of gaseous
xenon, which could have implications for the development of novel xenon-based
detectors.

Instrumentation and Detectors;High Energy Physics - Experiment