Study of nuclear recoils in liquid argon with monoenergetic neutrons

Abstract

For the development of liquid argon dark matter detectors we assembled a setup in the laboratory to scatter neutrons on a small liquid argon target. The neutrons are produced mono-energetically (E_kin=2.45 MeV) by nuclear fusion in a deuterium plasma and are collimated onto a 3" liquid argon cell operating in single-phase mode (zero electric field). Organic liquid scintillators are used to tag scattered neutrons and to provide a time-of-flight measurement. The setup is designed to study light pulse shapes and scintillation yields from nuclear and electronic recoils as well as from α-particles at working points relevant to dark matter searches. Liquid argon offers the possibility to scrutinise scintillation yields in noble liquids with respect to the populations of the two fundamental excimer states. Here we present experimental methods and first results from recent data towards such studies.

9 pages, 8 figures, proceedings of TAUP 2011, to be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JCPS)

References in corpus (3)

• Simultaneous Measurement of Ionization and Scintillation from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Xenon as Target for a Dark Matter Experiment
• A Model of Nuclear Recoil Scintillation Efficiency in Noble Liquids
• First results on light readout from the 1-ton ArDM liquid argon detector for dark matter searches

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Liquid noble gas detectors for low energy particle physics
• Measurement of Scintillation and Ionization Yield and Scintillation Pulse Shape from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon
• A Review of Basic Energy Reconstruction Techniques in Liquid Xenon and Argon Detectors for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics Using NEST
• WIMP Dark Matter Direct-Detection Searches in Noble Gases
• Relative Measurement and Extrapolation of the Scintillation Quenching Factor of $\alpha$-Particles in Liquid Argon using DEAP-3600 Data