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.

arXiv comment9 pages, 8 figures, proceedings of TAUP 2011, to be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JCPS)

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Dark matter direct-detection experiments
• First Measurement of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering on Argon
• 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
• Measurement of the scintillation time spectra and pulse-shape discrimination of low-energy beta and nuclear recoils in liquid argon with DEAP-1
• 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
• Observation of the Dependence of Scintillation from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon on Drift Field
• Scintillation of Liquid Helium for Low-Energy Nuclear Recoils
• Scintillation efficiency of liquid argon in low energy neutron-argon scattering
• Relative Measurement and Extrapolation of the Scintillation Quenching Factor of $\alpha$-Particles in Liquid Argon using DEAP-3600 Data