First measurement of the ionization yield of nuclear recoils in liquid argon

Abstract

This Letter details a measurement of the ionization yield ($Q_y$) of 6.7 keV ${}^{40}Ar$ atoms stopping in a liquid argon detector. The $Q_y$ of 3.6-6.3 detected $e^{-}/\mbox{keV}$, for applied electric fields in the range 240--2130 V/cm, is encouraging for the use of this detector medium to search for the signals from hypothetical dark matter particle interactions and from coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering. A significant dependence of $Q_y$ on the applied electric field is observed and explained in the context of ion recombination.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Liquid noble gas detectors for low energy particle physics
• Nuclear recoil energy scale in liquid xenon with application to the direct detection of dark matter
• Detection of reactor antineutrino coherent scattering off nuclei with a two-phase noble gas detector
• Observation of the Dependence of Scintillation from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon on Drift Field
• First demonstration of a sub-keV electron recoil energy threshold in a liquid argon ionization chamber
• Design and Characterization of a Neutron Calibration Facility for the Study of sub-keV Nuclear Recoils

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Observation of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering
• Low-Mass Dark Matter Search with the DarkSide-50 Experiment
• Measurement of Scintillation and Ionization Yield and Scintillation Pulse Shape from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon
• Measurement of the liquid argon energy response to nuclear and electronic recoils
• Atomic limits in the search for galactic dark matter
• Simulation of argon response and light detection in the DarkSide-50 dual phase TPC
• Calibration of the liquid argon ionization response to low energy electronic and nuclear recoils with DarkSide-50
• SiPM-matrix readout of two-phase argon detectors using electroluminescence in the visible and near infrared range
• Proposed low-energy absolute calibration of nuclear recoils in a dual-phase noble element TPC using D-D neutron scattering kinematics
• Measurement of the ionization yield of nuclear recoils in liquid argon at 80 and 233 keV
• Two-phase Cryogenic Avalanche Detector with electroluminescence gap operated in argon doped with nitrogen
• Measurement of the scintillation efficiency for nuclear recoils in liquid argon under electric fields up to 3 kV/cm
• Measurement of the ionization yield of nuclear recoils in liquid argon using a two-phase detector with electroluminescence gap
• Low-Energy (<10 keV) Electron Ionization and Recombination Model for a Liquid Argon Detector
• Design and demonstration of a quasi-monoenergetic neutron source
• Electron recombination in low-energy nuclear recoils tracks in liquid argon
• About detecting very low mass black holes in LAr detectors
• Measurement of scintillation response of CsI[Na] to low-energy nuclear recoils by COHERENT
• Calibration of nuclear recoils at the 100 eV scale using neutron capture
• Measurement of the Ionization Yield of Neutron-Induced Proton Recoils in Tetramethylsilane
• Characterization of argon recoils at the keV scale with ReD and ReD+