Lowering the low-energy threshold of xenon detectors

Abstract

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 scintillation signal. We therefore relinquish incident particle type discrimination, which is based on the ratio of ionization to scintillation in liquid xenon. This method compromises the detector's ability to precisely determine the z coordinate of a particle interaction. However, we show for the first time that it is possible to discriminate bulk events from surface events based solely on the ionization signal.

arXiv commentConference proceedings from the Identification of Dark Matter 2010, Montpellier, France. To be published by SISSA as PoS(IDM2010)017

References in corpus (5)

• Results from a Search for Light-Mass Dark Matter with a P-type Point Contact Germanium Detector
• A Consistent Dark Matter Interpretation For CoGeNT and DAMA/LIBRA
• Design and Performance of the XENON10 Dark Matter Experiment
• Dark Moments and the DAMA-CoGeNT Puzzle
• Luminous Dark Matter

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Migdal Effect in Dark Matter Direct Detection Experiments
• A Review of Basic Energy Reconstruction Techniques in Liquid Xenon and Argon Detectors for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics Using NEST
• CoGeNT, DAMA, and Light Neutralino Dark Matter
• A Detailed Look at the First Results from the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) Dark Matter Experiment
• Model Independent Direct Detection Analyses
• Anisotropic diffusion of electrons in liquid xenon with application to improving the sensitivity of direct dark matter searches
• Detecting Low-Energy Interactions and the Effects of Energy Accumulation in Materials
• Recent results in the search for dark matter with noble liquid detectors
• Ionization Yield from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid-Xenon Dark Matter Detection