Measurement of single electron emission in two-phase xenon

Abstract

We present the first measurements of the electroluminescence response to the emission of single electrons in a two-phase noble gas detector. Single ionization electrons generated in liquid xenon are detected in a thin gas layer during the 31-day background run of the ZEPLIN-II experiment, a two-phase xenon detector for WIMP dark matter searches. Both the pressure dependence and magnitude of the single-electron response are in agreement with previous measurements of electroluminescence yield in xenon. We discuss different photoionization processes as possible cause for the sample of single electrons studied in this work. This observation may have implications for the design and operation of future large-scale two-phase systems.

11 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• First results from a Dark Matter search with liquid Argon at 87 K in the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory
• First limits on WIMP nuclear recoil signals in ZEPLIN-II: a two phase xenon detector for dark matter detection
• The ZEPLIN-III dark matter detector: instrument design, manufacture and commissioning

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