Related papers: Revised performance parameters of the ZEPLIN-III d…
For the development of liquid argon dark matter detectors we assembled a setup in the laboratory to scatter neutrons on a small liquid argon target. The neutrons are produced mono-energetically (E_kin=2.45 MeV) by nuclear fusion in a…
Recoil imaging entails the detection of spatially resolved ionization tracks generated by particle interactions. This is a highly sought-after capability in many classes of detector, with broad applications across particle and astroparticle…
We have performed measurements of scintillation light in liquid neon, observing a signal yield in our detector as high as (3.5 $\pm$ 0.4) photoelectrons/keV. We measure pulse shape discrimination efficiency between electronic and nuclear…
Liquid Xenon (LXe) is expected to be an excellent target and detector medium to search for dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). Knowledge of LXe ionization and scintillation response to low energy nuclear…
Recently, the XENON1T experiment has reported the possible detection of an excess in the electronic recoil spectrum. Such an excess may indicate the presence of new physics. In this work, we suggest that the scattering of mirror electrons…
We propose a decaying cold dark matter model to explain the excess of electron recoil observed at the XENON1T experiment. In this scenario, the daughter dark matter from the parent dark matter decay easily obtains velocity large enough to…
Liquid Xenon (LXe) is an excellent material for experiments designed to detect dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). A low energy detection threshold is essential for a sensitive WIMP search. The…
We present a measurement of scintillation efficiency for a few tens of keV nuclear recoils (NR) with a liquid argon time projection chamber under electric fields ranging from $0$ to $3\ {\rm kV/cm}$. The calibration data are taken with…
Direct searches for dark matter in the form of WIMPs with argon-based detectors require precise measurements of the ionization yield \Qy\ for nuclear recoils at low energies. Prior to this work, direct experimental data were available only…
The ZEPLIN-III experiment is operating in its second phase at the Boulby Underground Laboratory in search of dark matter WIMPs. The major upgrades to the instrument over its first science run include lower background photomultiplier tubes…
Direct detection experiments turn to lose sensitivity of searching for a sub-MeV light dark matter candidate due to the threshold of recoil energy. However, such light dark matter particles can be accelerated by energetic cosmic-rays such…
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment aims to detect dark matter particles that elastically scatter from nuclei in semiconductor detectors. The resulting nuclear-recoil energy depositions are detected by ionization and…
The current generation of cryogenic solid state detectors used in direct dark matter and CE\textnu NS searches typically reach energy thresholds of $\mathcal{O}$(10)$\,$eV for nuclear recoils. For a reliable calibration in this energy…
The DEAP-1 low-background liquid argon detector was used to measure scintillation pulse shapes of electron and nuclear recoil events and to demonstrate the feasibility of pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) down to an electron-equivalent…
We present measurements of the electron-recoil (ER) response of the LUX dark matter detector based upon 170,000 highly pure and spatially-uniform tritium decays. We reconstruct the tritium energy spectrum using the combined energy model and…
Neutron-induced nuclear recoil background is critical to the dark matter searches in the PandaX-4T liquid xenon experiment. This paper studies the feature of neutron background in liquid xenon and evaluates their contribution in the single…
In the recent years, argon-based experiments looking for Dark Matter in the Universe have explored the non-standard scenario in which Dark Matter is made by low-mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, of mass in the range of 1-10 GeV…
We show that the excess in electron recoil events seen by the XENON1T experiment can be explained by relatively low-mass Luminous Dark Matter candidate. The dark matter scatters inelastically in the detector (or the surrounding rock), to…
Motivated by the recent XENON1T results, we explore various new physics models that can be discovered through searches for electron recoils in O(keV)-threshold direct-detection experiments. First, we consider the absorption of light bosons,…
We report a comprehensive study of the energy response to low-energy recoils in dual-phase xenon-based dark matter experiments. A recombination model is developed to explain the recombination probability as a function of recoil energy at…