Simulation of argon response and light detection in the DarkSide-50 dual phase TPC

Abstract

A Geant4-based Monte Carlo package named G4DS has been developed to simulate the response of DarkSide-50, an experiment operating since 2013 at LNGS, designed to detect WIMP interactions in liquid argon. In the process of WIMP searches, DarkSide-50 has achieved two fundamental milestones: the rejection of electron recoil background with a power of ~10^7, using the pulse shape discrimination technique, and the measurement of the residual 39Ar contamination in underground argon, ~3 orders of magnitude lower with respect to atmospheric argon. These results rely on the accurate simulation of the detector response to the liquid argon scintillation, its ionization, and electron-ion recombination processes. This work provides a complete overview of the DarkSide Monte Carlo and of its performance, with a particular focus on PARIS, the custom-made liquid argon response model.

29 pages, 23 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (8)

• Results from a search for dark matter in the complete LUX exposure
• Dark Matter Results from 225 Live Days of XENON100 Data
• First Results from the DarkSide-50 Dark Matter Experiment at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso
• Measurement of the specific activity of Ar-39 in natural argon
• Measurement of Scintillation and Ionization Yield and Scintillation Pulse Shape from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon
• A Model of Nuclear Recoil Scintillation Efficiency in Noble Liquids
• Evidence of delayed light emission of TetraPhenyl Butadiene excited by liquid Argon scintillation light
• Measurement of the ionization yield of nuclear recoils in liquid argon using a two-phase detector with electroluminescence gap

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Search for dark matter particle interactions with electron final states with DarkSide-50
• Calibration of the liquid argon ionization response to low energy electronic and nuclear recoils with DarkSide-50
• Sensitivity projections for a dual-phase argon TPC optimized for light dark matter searches through the ionization channel
• DarkSide-20k sensitivity to light dark matter particles
• Wavelength-Shifting Performance of Polyethylene Naphthalate Films in a Liquid Argon Environment
• Study of cosmogenic activation above ground for the DarkSide-20k experiment
• Search for dark matter annual modulation with DarkSide-50
• Characterization of the scintillation time response of liquid argon detectors for dark matter search
• Long-term temporal stability of the DarkSide-50 dark matter detector
• Performance of the ReD TPC, a novel double-phase LAr detector with Silicon Photomultiplier Readout