Nuclear recoil energy scale in liquid xenon with application to the direct detection of dark matter

Abstract

We show for the first time that the quenching of electronic excitation from nuclear recoils in liquid xenon is well-described by Lindhard theory, if the nuclear recoil energy is reconstructed using the combined (scintillation and ionization) energy scale proposed by Shutt {\it et al.}. We argue for the adoption of this perspective in favor of the existing preference for reconstructing nuclear recoil energy solely from primary scintillation. We show that signal partitioning into scintillation and ionization is well-described by the Thomas-Imel box model. We discuss the implications for liquid xenon detectors aimed at the direct detection of dark matter.

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• Atomic limits in the search for galactic dark matter
• Towards Probing the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background in All Flavors
• Calibration of the liquid argon ionization response to low energy electronic and nuclear recoils with DarkSide-50
• First Constraints on WIMP-Nucleon Effective Field Theory Couplings in an Extended Energy Region From LUX-ZEPLIN
• A Review of NEST Models for Liquid Xenon and Exhaustive Comparison to Other Approaches
• Measurement of the ionization yield of nuclear recoils in liquid argon at 80 and 233 keV
• Constraints on Effective Field Theory Couplings Using 311.2 days of LUX Data
• Low-energy Calibration of XENON1T with an Internal ${}^{37}$Ar Source
• Neutrino Backgrounds in Future Liquid Noble Element Dark Matter Direct Detection Experiments
• Low-Energy (<10 keV) Electron Ionization and Recombination Model for a Liquid Argon Detector
• Importance of upgraded energy reconstruction for direct dark matter searches with liquid xenon detectors
• A New Analysis Method for WIMP searches with Dual-Phase Liquid Xe TPCs
• Detection and Calibration of Low-Energy Nuclear Recoils for Dark Matter and Neutrino Scattering Experiments
• Nuclear Recoil Calibration at Sub-keV Energies in LUX and Its Impact on Dark Matter Search Sensitivity
• Isospin-violating dark matter at liquid noble detectors: new constraints, future projections, and an exploration of target complementarity
• Nuclear recoil response of liquid xenon and its impact on solar 8B neutrino and dark matter searches