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 of 6g as scintillating absorber, we have achieved a discrimination of nuclear recoils against electron recoils with a suppression factor of 99.7% at energies above 15 keV. This novel method will be applied for background rejection in the CRESST (Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers) experiment looking for dark matter Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs).
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 $^{252}{\rm Cf}$ radioactive source. Observed scintillation and electroluminescence spectra are simultaneously fit with spectra derived from Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulation and an NR model. The scintillation efficiency extracted from the fit is reported as a function of recoil energy and electric field. This result can be used for designing the detector and …
A two-phase argon detector has high discrimination power between electron recoil and nuclear recoil events based on the pulse shape discrimination and the ionization/scintillation ratio (S2/S1). This character is very suitable for the dark matter search to establish the low background experiment. However, the basic properties of S2/S1 of argon are not well known, as compared with xenon. We report the evaluation of S2/S1 properties with a two-phase detector at drift-fields of 0.2-3.0 kV/cm. Finally, the discrimination power against electron recoil background of S2/S1 is discussed.
We have measured the scintillation and ionization yield of recoiling nuclei in liquid argon as a function of applied electric field by exposing a dual-phase liquid argon time projection chamber (LAr-TPC) to a low energy pulsed narrow band neutron beam produced at the Notre Dame Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics. Liquid scintillation counters were arranged to detect and identify neutrons scattered in the TPC and to select the energy of the recoiling nuclei. We report measurements of the scintillation yields for nuclear recoils with energies from 10.3 to 57.3 keV and for median ap…
We present new measurements of the scintillation and ionization yields in liquid xenon for low energy electronic (about 3--7 keV$_{ee}$) and nuclear recoils (about 8--20 keV$_{nr}$) at different drift fields from 236 V/cm to 3.93 kV/cm, using a three-dimensional sensitive liquid xenon time projection chamber with high energy and position resolutions. Our measurement of signal responses to nuclear recoils agrees with predictions from the NEST model. However, our measured ionization (scintillation) yields for electronic recoils are consistently higher (lower) than those from the NEST model by ab…
We have exposed a dual-phase Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LAr-TPC) to a low energy pulsed narrowband neutron beam, produced at the Notre Dame Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics to study the scintillation light yield of recoiling nuclei in a LAr-TPC. A liquid scintillation counter was arranged to detect and identify neutrons scattered in the LAr-TPC target and to select the energy of the recoiling nuclei. We report the observation of a significant dependence on drift field of liquid argon scintillation from nuclear recoils of 11 keV. This observation is important because,…
We perform a theoretical study of the scintillation efficiency in the low-energy region crucial for liquid-xenon dark-matter detectors. We develop a computer program to simulate the cascading process of the recoiling xenon nucleus in liquid xenon and calculate the nuclear quenching effect due to atomic collisions. We use the electronic stopping power extrapolated from the experimental data to the low-energy region, and take into account the effects of electrons escaping from the electron-ion pair recombination using the generalized Thomas-Imel model fitted to scintillation data. Our result agr…
Liquid xenon-based direct detection dark matter experiments have recently expanded their searches to include high-energy nuclear recoil events as motivated by effective field theory dark matter and inelastic dark matter interaction models, but few xenon recoil calibrations above 100 keV are currently available. In this work, we measured the scintillation and ionization yields of xenon recoils up to 426 keV. The experiment uses 14.1 MeV neutrons to scatter off xenon in a compact liquid xenon time projection chamber and produce quasi-monoenergetic xenon recoils between 39 keV and 426 keV. We rep…
We investigate scintillation linearity of a commercial high pressure $^4$He gas detector using monoenergetic 2.8 MeV neutrons from a deuterium-deuterium fusion neutron generator. The scintillation response of the detector was measured for a range of recoil energies between 83 keV and 626 keV by tagging neutrons scattering into fixed angles with a far-side organic scintillator detector. Detailed Monte Carlo simulations were compared to experimental data to determine the linearity of the detector response by comparing the scaling of the energy deposits in the simulations to the detector output. …
Superfluid $^4$He is a promising target material for direct detection of light ($<$ 1 GeV) dark matter. Possible signal channels available for readout in this medium include prompt photons, triplet excimers, and roton and phonon quasiparticles. The relative yield of these signals has implications for the sensitivity and discrimination power of a superfluid $^4$He dark matter detector. Using a 16~cm$^3$ volume of 1.75~K superfluid $^4$He read out by six immersed photomultiplier tubes, we measured the scintillation from electronic recoils ranging between 36.3 and 185 keV$_\mathrm{ee}$, yielding …
Simulation studies have been carried out to explore the ability to discriminate between single-site and multi-site energy depositions in large scale liquid scintillation detectors. A robust approach has been found that is predicted to lead to a significant statistical separation for a large variety of event classes, providing a powerful tool to discriminate against backgrounds and break important degeneracies in signal extraction. This has particularly relevant implications for liquid scintillator searches for neutrinoless double beta decay ($0νββ$) from $^{130}$Te and $^{136}$Xe, where it is …
New Measurement of the Relative Scintillation Efficiency of Xenon Nuclear Recoils Below 10 keV
液态氙是直接暗物质实验中的一种重要探测介质，用于寻找由夸克与弱相互作用粒子弹性散射产生的低能核反冲。现有的两个测量的相对闪烁效率低于20千电子伏的核反冲导致不一致的外推在较低的能量。这导致了不同的能量尺度，从而导致了液体氙暗物质探测器的灵敏度范围。我们报告了一个新的测量的相对闪烁效率低于10千电子伏的液体氙闪烁探测器，优化最大的光收集。该探测器的内表面的95%以上装有光电倍增管，对于122 keV伽马射线，闪烁产率为19.6光电子/keV电子当量。我们发现，5千电子伏的核反冲的相对闪烁效率为0.14，保持恒定的这个值高达10千电子伏。对于更高的能量反冲，我们测量到的值约为20%，与以前报道的数据一致。根据这一新的测量结果，XENON 10实验的自旋无关的WIMP-核子截面的结果（假设相对闪烁效率为0.19），对于质量为100 GeV/c $^2$的WIMP，从$8.8\times10^{-44}$ cm $^2$变为$9.9\times10^{-44}$ cm $^2$，对于质量为30 GeV/c $^2$的WIMP，从$4.4\times10^{-44}$ cm $^2$变为$5.6\times10^{-44}$ cm $^2$。
Ionization and scintillation produced by nuclear recoils in gaseous xenon at approximately 14 bar have been simultaneously observed in an electroluminescent time projection chamber. Neutrons from radioisotope $α$-Be neutron sources were used to induce xenon nuclear recoils, and the observed recoil spectra were compared to a detailed Monte Carlo employing estimated ionization and scintillation yields for nuclear recoils. The ability to discriminate between electronic and nuclear recoils using the ratio of ionization to primary scintillation is demonstrated. These results encourage further inves…
Scintillation crystals are commonly used for direct detection of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are suitable candidates for a particle dark matter. It is well known that the scintillation light yields are different for electron recoil and nuclear recoil. To calibrate the energies of WIMP-induced nuclear recoil signals, the quenching factor (QF) needs to be measured, which is the light yield ratio of the nuclear recoil to electron recoil. Measurements of the QFs for Na and I recoils in a small (2 cm x 2 cm x 1.5 cm) NaI(Tl) crystal are performed with 2.43-MeV mono-energetic…
The scintillation yield for recoil Ar ions of 5 to 250 keV energy in liquid argon have been evaluated for direct dark matter searches. Lindhard theory is taken for estimating nuclear quenching. A theoretical model based on a biexcitonic diffusion-reaction mechanism is performed for electronic (scintillation) quenching. The electronic LET (linear energy transfer) is evaluated and used to obtain the initial track structure due to recoil Ar ions. The results are compared with experimental values reported for nuclear recoils from neutrons. The behavior of scintillation and ionization on the field …
We present measurements of the scintillation pulse shape in liquid xenon for nuclear recoils (NR) and electronic recoils (ER) at electric fields of 0 to 0.5 kV/cm for energies $<$ 15 keV and $<$ 70 keV electron-equivalent, respectively. The average pulse shapes are well-described by an effective model with two exponential decay components, where both decay times are fit parameters. We find significant broadening of the pulse for ER due to delayed luminescence from the recombination process. In addition to the effective model, we fit a model describing the recombination luminescence for ER at z…
The dark matter interpretation of the DAMA modulation signal depends on the NaI(Tl) scintillation efficiency of nuclear recoils. Previous measurements for Na recoils have large discrepancies, especially in the DAMA/LIBRA modulation energy region. We report a quenching effect measurement of Na recoils in NaI(Tl) from 3keV$_{\text{nr}}$ to 52keV$_{\text{nr}}$, covering the whole DAMA/LIBRA energy region for light WIMP interpretations. By using a low-energy, pulsed neutron beam, a double time-of-flight technique, and pulse-shape discrimination methods, we obtained the most accurate measurement of…
The feasibility of an ultra-low energy nuclear-recoil measurement in liquid xenon using neutron capture is investigated for a small (sub-kilogram) liquid xenon detector that is optimized for a high scintillation gain, and a pulsed neutron source. The measurement uses the recoil energies imparted to xenon nuclei during the de-excitation process following neutron capture, where promptly emitted $γ$ cascades can provide the nuclei with up to $0.3$ keV$_\text{nr}$ of recoil energy due to conservation of momentum. A successful calibration of scintillation photon and ionization electron yields below…
This paper describes a FADC Readout system developed for the tap water $α/β$ dose monitoring system which is based on EJ444 phoswich scintillation detector and wavelength shifting fiber readout. The Readout system contains dual sampling channels that can supply sampling rate up to 1 GSPS, 14-Bit vertical resolution and adequate effective number of bits (9.7 Bits at 10 MHz), which is optimum for the discrimination of the minimal difference between alpha/beta signals. Moreover, the system is based on a ZYNQ SoC which provides high data throughput speed, low latency and excellent flexibility. As …
Digital pulse shape discrimination has become readily available to distinguish nuclear recoil and electronic recoil events in scintillation detectors. We evaluate digital implementations of pulse shape discrimination algorithms discussed in the literature, namely the Charge Comparison Method, Pulse-Gradient Analysis, Fourier Series and Standard Event fitting. In addition, we present a novel algorithm based on a Laplace Transform. Instead of reducing the performance of these algorithms to a single Figure of Merit, we evaluate them as function of recoil energy. Specifically, using commercial EJ-…
We report an in-situ measurement of the nuclear recoil (NR) scintillation decay time constant in liquid xenon (LXe) using the XMASS-I detector at the Kamioka underground laboratory in Japan. XMASS-I is a large single-phase LXe scintillation detector whose purpose is the direct detection of dark matter via NR which can be induced by collisions between Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) and a xenon nucleus. The inner detector volume contains 832 kg of LXe. $^{252}$Cf was used as an external neutron source for irradiating the detector. The scintillation decay time constant of the result…
A novel algorithm for the discrimination of neutron and γ-ray with wavelet transform modulus maximum (WTMM) in an organic scintillation has been investigated. Voltage pulses arising from a BC501A organic liquid scintillation detector in a mixed radiation field have been recorded with a fast digital sampling oscilloscope. The performances of most pulse shape discrimination methods in scintillation detection systems using time-domain features of the pulses are affected intensively by noise. However, the WTMM method using frequency-domain features exhibits a strong insensitivity to noise and can …
The bright scintillation of pure CsI operated at liquid-nitrogen temperature makes of this material a promising dark matter and neutrino detector. We present the first measurement of its quenching factor for nuclear recoils. Our findings indicate it is indistinguishable from that for sodium-doped CsI at room temperature. Additional properties such as light yield, afterglow, scintillation decay properties for electron and nuclear recoils, and energy proportionality are studied over the \mbox{108-165 K} temperature range, confirming the vast potential of this medium for rare-event searches.
With the development of high-speed readout electronics, the digital pulse shape discrimination (PSD) methods have attracted the attention of more researchers, especially in the field of high energy physics and neutron detection. How to choose a PSD algorithm and corresponding data acquisition system (DAQ) naturally becomes a critical problem to settle down for the detection system designers. In this paper, the relationship between the classification performance of different PSD algorithms and digitizers' sampling properties (including sampling rate and the effective number of bits) has been re…
Scintillation response of cryogenic CsI to few-keV and sub-keV nuclear recoils
University of Chicago（芝加哥大学）；Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC)（多诺西亚国际物理中心）；Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science（伊克尔巴斯基克，巴斯克科学基金会）；Instituto de Física Corpuscular, CSIC & Universitat de València（粒子物理研究所，西班牙国家科学研究委员会与瓦伦西亚大学）
Dark matter particles scattering off some target nuclei are expected to deposit very small energies in form of nuclear recoils (below 100 keV). Because of the low scintillation efficiency for nuclear recoils vs. electron recoils, in most of the scintillating targets considered in the search for dark matter, the region below 10 keVee concentrates most of the expected dark matter signal. For this reason, very low energy threshold (at or below 2 keVee) and very low background are required. This is the case of the ANAIS (Annual modulation with NaI Scintillators) experiment. A good knowledge of the…
A digital pulse shape discrimination system based on a programmable module NI-5772 has been established and tested with EJ-301 liquid scintillation detector. The module was operated by means of running programs developed in LabVIEW with the sampling frequency up to 1.6GS/s. Standard gamma sources 22Na, 137Cs and 60Co were used to calibrate the EJ-301 liquid scintillation detector, and the gamma response function has been obtained. Digital algorithms for charge comparison method and zero-crossing method have been developed. The experimental results showed that both digital signal processing (DS…
Liquid argon is used as active medium in a variety of neutrino and Dark Matter experiments thanks to its excellent properties of charge yield and transport and as a scintillator. Liquid argon scintillation photons are emitted in a narrow band of 10~nm centered around 127 nm and with a characteristic time profile made by two components originated by the decay of the lowest lying singlet and triplet state of the excimer Ar$_2^*$ to the dissociative ground state. A model is proposed which takes into account the quenching of the long lived triplet states through the self-interaction with other tri…
This paper reports a series of measurements that characterize the directional dependence of the scintillation response of crystalline anthracene to incident DT neutrons, DD neutrons, Cs-137 gamma rays, and, for the first time, cosmic ray muons. The neutron measurements give the amplitude and pulse shape dependence on the proton recoil direction over one hemisphere of the crystal, confirming and extending previous results in the literature. In similar measurements using incident gamma rays, no directional effect is evident, and any anisotropy with respect to the electron recoil direction is con…
Measuring the scintillation and ionization yields of liquid xenon in response to ultra-low energy nuclear recoil events is necessary to increase the sensitivity of liquid xenon experiments to light dark matter. Neutron capture on xenon can be used to produce nuclear recoil events with energies below $0.3$ keV$_\text{NR}$ via the asymmetric emission of $γ$ rays during nuclear de-excitation. The feasibility of an ultra-low energy nuclear recoil measurement using neutron capture was investigated for the Michigan Xenon (MiX) detector, a small dual-phase xenon time projection chamber that is optimi…
MIMAC (MIcro-TPC MAtrix of Chambers) is a directional WIMP Dark Matter detector project. Direct dark matter experiments need a high level of electron/recoil discrimination to search for nuclear recoils produced by WIMP-nucleus elastic scattering. In this paper, we proposed an original method for electron event rejection based on a multivariate analysis applied to experimental data acquired using monochromatic neutron fields. This analysis shows that a $10^5$ rejection power is reachable for electron/recoil discrimination. Moreover, the efficiency was estimated by a Monte-Carlo simulation showi…
A liquid argon time projection chamber, constructed for the Argon Response to Ionization and Scintillation (ARIS) experiment, has been exposed to the highly collimated and quasi-monoenergetic LICORNE neutron beam at the Institute de Physique Nuclaire Orsay in order to study the scintillation response to nuclear and electronic recoils. An array of liquid scintillator detectors, arranged around the apparatus, tag scattered neutrons and select nuclear recoil energies in the [7, 120] keV energy range. The relative scintillation efficiency of nuclear recoils was measured to high precision at null f…
We measure the liquid argon scintillation response to electronic recoils in the energy range of $2.82$ to $1274.6~{\rm keV}$ at null electric field. The single-phase detector with a large optical coverage used in this measurement yields $12.8 \pm 0.3 ~ (11.2 \pm 0.3)~{\rm photoelectron/keV}$ for $511.0$-${\rm keV}$ $γ$-ray events based on a photomultiplier tube single photoelectron response modeling with a Gaussian plus an additional exponential term (with only a Gaussian term). It is exposed to a variety of calibration sources such as $^{22}{\rm Na}$ and $^{241}{\rm Am}$ $γ$-ray emitters, and…
Experiments searching for weak interacting massive particles with noble gases such as liquid argon require very low detection thresholds for nuclear recoils. A determination of the scintillation efficiency is crucial to quantify the response of the detector at low energy. We report the results obtained with a small liquid argon cell using a monoenergetic neutron beam produced by a deuterium-deuterium fusion source. The light yield relative to electrons was measured for six argon recoil energies between 11 and 120 keV at zero electric drift field.
A VME-based experiment system for n-γ discrimination using the charge comparison method was established. A data acquisition program for controlling the programmable modules and processing data online via VME64X bus was developed through the use of LabVIEW. The two-dimensional (2D) scatter plots of the charge in the slow component vs. the total charge of recorded pulses from Am-Be and Cf neutron sources were presented. The 2D scatter plots of the energy vs. the ratio of the charge in the slow component to the total charge of the pulses were presented at the meantime. The quality of n-γ discrimi…
We report a new method of using the plasma time difference, which results from the plasma effect, between the nuclear and electronic recoil events in high-purity germanium detectors to distinguish these two types of events in the search for rare physics processes. The physics mechanism of the plasma effect is discussed in detail. A numerical model is developed to calculate the plasma time for nuclear and electronic recoils at various energies in germanium detectors. It can be shown that under certain conditions the plasma time difference is large enough to be observable. The experimental aspec…
This paper is the first report of n-type GaAs as a cryogenic scintillation radiation detector for the detection of electron recoils from interacting dark matter (DM) particles in the poorly explored MeV/c2 mass range. Seven GaAs samples from two commercial suppliers and with different silicon and boron concentrations were studied for their low temperature optical and scintillation properties. All samples are n-type even at low temperatures and exhibit emission between silicon donors and boron acceptors that peaks at 1.33 eV (930 nm). The lowest excitation band peaks at 1.44 eV (860 nm) and the…
We describe here measurements with a new device, the "dichroicon," a Winston-style light concentrator built out of dichroic reflectors, which could allow large-scale neutrino detectors to sort photons by wavelength with small overall light loss. Photon sorting would benefit large-scale water or ice Cherenkov detectors such as Hyper-Kamiokande or ICECUBE by providing a measure of dispersion, which in turn could allow improved position reconstruction and timing. For scintillator detectors like JUNO, upgrades to SNO+ or KamLAND-ZEN, or to water-based liquid scintillator detectors like Theia, dich…
A Discrete Fourier Transform Method (DFTM) for discrimination between the signal of neutrons and gamma rays in organic scintillation detectors is presented. The method is based on the transformation of signals into the frequency domain using the sine and cosine Fourier transforms in combination with the discrete Fourier transform. The method is largely benefited from considerable differences that usually is available between the zero-frequency components of sine and cosine and the norm of the amplitude of the DFT for neutrons and gamma-ray signals. Moreover, working in frequency domain natural…
The response of liquid xenon to low-energy electronic recoils is relevant in the search for dark-matter candidates which interact predominantly with atomic electrons in the medium, such as axions or axion-like particles, as opposed to weakly interacting massive particles which are predicted to scatter with atomic nuclei. Recently, liquid-xenon scintillation light has been observed from electronic recoils down to 2.1 keV, but without applied electric fields that are used in most xenon dark matter searches. Applied electric fields can reduce the scintillation yield by hindering the electron-ion …
Linear alkyl benzene (LAB) has in recent years been used as a solvent for PPO in large-scale scintillation detectors, like Daya Bay and SNO+. The combination has several nice properties, including high light yield, good materials compatibility, and excellent pulse shape discrimination. As charged particles move through the LAB+PPO, both Cherenkov and scintillation light are created. Separating Cherenkov from scintillation light would allow a broad range of physics in future large-scale detectors like THEIA, by allowing direction reconstruction with Cherenkov light while retaining the high ligh…
The scintillation mechanism in NaI:Tl crystals produces different pulse shapes that are dependent on the incoming particle type. The time distribution of scintillation light from nuclear recoil events decays faster than for electron recoil events and this difference can be categorised using various Pulse Shape Discrimination (PSD) techniques. In this study, we measured nuclear and electron recoils in a NaI:Tl crystal, with electron equivalent energies between 2 and 40 keV. We report on a new PSD approach, based on an event-type likelihood; this outperforms the charge-weighted mean-time, which …
