We present low energy recoil detection results in the keV energy region, from measurements performed with the Spherical Proportional Counter (SPC). An 241Am−9Be fast neutron source is used in order to obtain neutron-nucleus elastic scattering events inside the gaseous volume of the detector. The detector performance in the keV energy region was resolved by observing the 5.9keV line of a 55Fe X-ray source, with energy resolution of 9% (σ). The toolkit GEANT4 was used to simulate the irradiation of the detector by an 241Am−9Be source, while SRIM was used to calculate the Ionization Quenching Factor (IQF). The GEANT4 simulated energy deposition spectrum in addition with the SRIM calculated quenching factor provide valuable insight to the experimental results. The performance of the SPC in low energy recoil detection makes the detector a good candidate for a wide range of applications, including Supernova or reactor neutrino detection and Dark Matter (WIMP) searches (via coherent elastic scattering).
@article{arxiv.1606.02146,
title = {Low energy recoil detection with a spherical proportional counter},
author = {I. Savvidis and I. Katsioulas and C. Eleftheriadis and I. Giomataris and T. Papaevangellou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.02146},
year = {2017}
}