Quenching factor measurements of neon nuclei in neon gas
Abstract
The NEWS-G collaboration uses Spherical Proportional Counters (SPCs) to search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). In this paper, we report the first measurements of the nuclear quenching factor in neon gas at \SI{2}{bar} using an SPC deployed in a neutron beam at the TUNL facility. The energy-dependence of the nuclear quenching factor is modelled using a simple power law: E; we determine its parameters by simultaneously fitting the data collected with the detector over a range of energies. We measured the following parameters in Ne:CH at \SI{2}{bar}: = 0.2801 0.0050 (fit) 0.0045 (sys) and = 0.0867 0.020 (fit) 0.006(sys). Our measurements do not agree with expected values from SRIM or Lindhard theory. We demonstrated the feasibility of performing quenching factor measurements at sub-keV energies in gases using SPCs and a neutron beam.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2109.01055,
title = {Quenching factor measurements of neon nuclei in neon gas},
author = {L. Balogh and C. Beaufort and A. Brossard and J. -F. Caron and M. Chapellier and J. -M. Coquillat and E. C. Corcoran and S. Crawford and A. Dastgheibi Fard and Y. Deng and K. Dering and D. Durnford and C. Garrah and G. Gerbier and I. Giomataris and G. Giroux and P. Gorel and M. Gros and P. Gros and O. Guillaudin and E. W. Hoppe and I. Katsioulas and F. Kelly and P. Knights and L. Kwon and S. Langrock and P. Lautridou and R. D. Martin and I. Manthos and J. Matthews and J. -P. Mols and J. -F. Muraz and T. Neep and K. Nikolopoulos and P. O'Brien and M. -C. Piro and P. Samuleev and D. Santos and G. Savvidis and I. Savvidis and F. Vazquez de Sola Fernandez and M. Vidal and R. Ward and M. Zampaolo and P. An and C. Awe and P. Barbeau and S. Hedges and L. Li and J. Runge},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.01055},
year = {2022}
}