Related papers: Energy loss due to defect creation in solid state …
Low-energy electronic recoil caused by solar neutrinos in multi-ton xenon detectors is an important subject not only because it is a source of the irreducible background for direct searches of weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs),…
We have developed a detector, consisting of a cryogenic calorimeter with a scintillating crystal as absorber, and a second calorimeter for the detection of the scintillation light, both operated at 12 mK. Using a CaWO4 crystal with a mass…
Directional detection of nuclear recoils is broadly desirable in nuclear and particle physics. At low recoil energies, this capability may be used to confirm the cosmological origin of a dark matter signal, to penetrate the so-called…
We study the reach of direct detection experiments for large bound states (containing $10^4$ or more dark nucleons) of Asymmetric Dark Matter. We consider ordinary nuclear recoils, excitation of collective modes (phonons), and electronic…
We show that the energy threshold for nuclear recoils in the XENON10 dark matter search data can be lowered to ~1 keV, by using only the ionization signal. In other words, we make no requirement that a valid event contain a primary…
Liquid xenon detectors such as XENON10 and XENON100 obtain a significant fraction of their sensitivity to light (<10 GeV) particle dark matter by looking for nuclear recoils of only a few keV, just above the detector threshold. Yet in this…
Elastic scattering off nuclei in target detectors, involving interactions with dark matter and coherent elastic neutrino nuclear recoil (CE$\nu$NS), results in the deposition of low energy within the nuclei, dissipating rapidly through a…
The scattering of sub-GeV dark matter in direct detection experiments happens at characteristic wavelengths comparable or larger than the interparticle spacing. Collective effects in the target material must therefore be accounted for when…
Dark matter (DM) scattering with nuclei in solid-state systems may produce elastic nuclear recoil at high energies and single-phonon excitation at low energies. When the dark matter momentum is comparable to the momentum spread of nuclei…
We present a comprehensive analysis of electronic recoil vs. nuclear recoil discrimination in liquid/gas xenon time projection chambers, using calibration data from the 2013 and 2014-16 runs of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment.…
Nuclear recoils in crystal detectors generate radiation damage in the form of crystal defects that can be measured in scientific-grade CCDs as local hot spots of leakage current stimulated by temperature increases in the devices. In this…
Liquid xenon (LXe) particle detectors are a powerful technology in the field of dark matter direct detection, having shown impressive results in recent years and holding strong possibility for leading the field in sensitivity to galactic…
We extend the study of the performance of a prototype two-phase liquid xenon WIMP dark matter detector to recoil energies below 20 keV. We demonstrate a new method for obtaining the best estimate of the energies of events using a calibrated…
We consider theoretically the energy loss of electrons scattered to high angles when assuming that the primary beam can be limited to a single atom. We discuss the possibility of identifying the isotopes of light elements and of extracting…
Directional detection is a promising Dark Matter search strategy. Even though it could accommodate to a sizeable background contamination, electron/recoil discrimination remains a key and challenging issue as for direction-insensitive…
In most direct detection experiments, the free nuclear recoil description of dark matter scattering breaks down for masses $\lesssim$ 100 MeV, or when the recoil energy is comparable to a few times the typical phonon energy. For dark matter…
Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CEvNS) provides a sensitive probe of neutrino interactions at low momentum transfer, but its experimental observation is strongly constrained by detector-related effects such as energy…
Organic scintillators are widely used for fast neutron detection and spectroscopy. Several effects complicate the interpretation of results from detectors based upon these materials. First, fast neutrons will often leave a detector before…
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…
The dependence of the light and charge yield of liquid xenon on the applied electric field and recoil energy is important for dark matter detectors using liquid xenon time projections chambers. Few measurements have been made of this field…