Low-Temperature Light Detectors: Neganov-Luke Amplification and Calibration

Abstract

The simultaneous measurement of phonons and scintillation light induced by incident particles in a scintillating crystal such as CaWO4 is a powerful technique for the active rejection of background induced by gamma's and beta's and even neutrons in direct Dark Matter searches. However, less than ~1% of the energy deposited in a CaWO4 crystal is detected as light. Thus, very sensitive light detectors are needed for an efficient event-by-event background discrimination. Due to the Neganov-Luke effect, the threshold of low-temperature light detectors based on semiconducting substrates can be improved significantly by drifting the photon-induced electron-hole pairs in an applied electric field. We present measurements with low-temperature light detectors based on this amplification mechanism. The Neganov-Luke effect makes it possible to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of our light detectors by a factor of ~9 corresponding to an energy threshold of ~21 eV. We also describe a method for an absolute energy calibration using a light-emitting diode.

additional figure, other figures improved

References in corpus (4)

• Results from 730 kg days of the CRESST-II Dark Matter Search
• Dark Matter Candidates: A Ten-Point Test
• Commissioning Run of the CRESST-II Dark Matter Search
• Interpretation of Light-Quenching Factor Measurements

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Dark matter direct-detection experiments
• WIMP-Search Results from the Second CDMSlite Run
• CDMSlite: A Search for Low-Mass WIMPs using Voltage-Assisted Calorimetric Ionization Detection in the SuperCDMS Experiment
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• Charge-to-heat transducers exploiting the Neganov-Trofimov-Luke effect for light detection in rare-event searches
• Neganov-Luke amplified cryogenic light detectors for the background discrimination in neutrinoless double beta decay search with TeO${}_2$ bolometers
• Potentialities of the future technical improvements in the search of rare nuclear decays by bolometers
• Performance of a Kinetic Inductance Phonon-Mediated Detector at the NEXUS Cryogenic Facility
• Scintillating bolometers: a key for determining WIMP parameters
• Cryogenic phonon-scintillation detectors with PMT readout for rare event search experiments
• Cryogenic silicon detectors with implanted contacts for the detection of visible photons using the Neganov-Luke Effect