A measurement of the ionization efficiency of nuclear recoils in silicon

Abstract

We have measured the ionization efficiency of silicon nuclear recoils with kinetic energy between 1.8 and 20 keV. We bombarded a silicon-drift diode with a neutron beam to perform an elastic-scattering experiment. A broad-energy neutron spectrum was used and the nuclear recoil energy was reconstructed using a measurement of the time of flight and scattering angle of the scattered neutron. The overall trend of the results of this work is well described by the theory of Lindhard et al. above 4 keV of recoil energy. Below this energy, the presented data shows a deviation from the model. The data indicates a faster drop than the theory prediction at low energies.

References in corpus (8)

• Results from a search for dark matter in the complete LUX exposure
• Scalar Dark Matter candidates
• CoGeNT: A Search for Low-Mass Dark Matter using p-type Point Contact Germanium Detectors
• WIMP-Search Results from the Second CDMSlite Run
• Search for low-mass WIMPs in a 0.6 kg day exposure of the DAMIC experiment at SNOLAB
• Dark matter pair-production in b -> s transitions
• Measurement of the ionization produced by sub-keV silicon nuclear recoils in a CCD dark matter detector
• Results of the engineering run of the Coherent Neutrino Nucleus Interaction Experiment (CONNIE)

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Results on Low-Mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles from an 11 kg-day Target Exposure of DAMIC at SNOLAB
• Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering at the European Spallation Source
• Search for light mediators in the low-energy data of the CONNIE reactor neutrino experiment
• Direct measurement of the ionization quenching factor of nuclear recoils in germanium in the keV energy range
• First results from a search for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) at a reactor site
• Study of the ionization efficiency for nuclear recoils in pure crystals
• First measurement of the nuclear-recoil ionization yield in silicon at 100 eV
• Nuclear-recoil energy scale in CDMS II silicon dark-matter detectors
• Naturally occurring ${}^{32}$Si and low-background silicon dark matter detectors
• First observation of isolated nuclear recoils following neutron capture for dark matter calibration
• Ionization efficiency for nuclear recoils in silicon from $\sim 50$ eV to $3$ MeV
• Detection and Calibration of Low-Energy Nuclear Recoils for Dark Matter and Neutrino Scattering Experiments
• Neutron capture-induced silicon nuclear recoils for dark matter and CE$\nu$NS
• Bracketing the direct detection exclusion plot for a WIMP of spin one half in non-relativistic effective theory
• A novel nuclear recoil calibration for liquid noble gas detectors
• Novel coincidence detection technique for precision measurement of neutron-capture-induced nuclear recoils
• Molecular Dynamics Simulations on Nuclear Recoils in Silicon Crystals towards Single Electron-Hole Pair Ionization Yields