The scintillation and ionization yield of liquid xenon for nuclear recoils
Abstract
XENON10 is an experiment designed to directly detect particle dark matter. It is a dual phase (liquid/gas) xenon time-projection chamber with 3D position imaging. Particle interactions generate a primary scintillation signal (S1) and ionization signal (S2), which are both functions of the deposited recoil energy and the incident particle type. We present a new precision measurement of the relative scintillation yield \leff and the absolute ionization yield Q_y, for nuclear recoils in xenon. A dark matter particle is expected to deposit energy by scattering from a xenon nucleus. Knowledge of \leff is therefore crucial for establishing the energy threshold of the experiment; this in turn determines the sensitivity to particle dark matter. Our \leff measurement is in agreement with recent theoretical predictions above 15 keV nuclear recoil energy, and the energy threshold of the measurement is 4 keV. A knowledge of the ionization yield \Qy is necessary to establish the trigger threshold of the experiment. The ionization yield \Qy is measured in two ways, both in agreement with previous measurements and with a factor of 10 lower energy threshold.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0807.0459,
title = {The scintillation and ionization yield of liquid xenon for nuclear recoils},
author = {P. Sorensen and A. Manzur and C. E. Dahl and J. Angle and E. Aprile and F. Arneodo and L. Baudis and A. Bernstein and A. Bolozdynya and P. Brusov and L. C. C. Coelho and L. DeViveiros and A. D. Ferella and L. M. P. Fernandes and S. Fiorucci and R. J. Gaitskell and K. L. Giboni and R. Gomez and R. Hasty and L. Kastens and J. Kwong and J. A. M. Lopes and N. Madden and A. Manalaysay and D. N. McKinsey and M. E. Monzani and K. Ni and U. Oberlack and J. Orboeck and G. Plante and R. Santorelli and J. M. F. dos Santos and P. Shagin and T. Shutt and S. Schulte and C. Winant and M. Yamashita},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.0459},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
8 pages, 9 figures. To be published in Nucl. Instrum. Methods A