Electron extraction efficiency study for dual-phase xenon dark matter experiments

Abstract

Dual-phase xenon detectors are widely used in dark matter direct detection experiments, and have demonstrated the highest sensitivities to a variety of dark matter interactions. However, a key component of the dual-phase detector technology--the efficiency of charge extraction from liquid xenon into gas--has not been well characterized. In this paper, we report a new measurement of the electron extraction efficiency (EEE) in a small xenon detector using two mono-energetic decay features of ${}^{37}$Ar. By achieving stable operation at very high voltages, we measured the EEE values at the highest extraction electric field strength reported to date. For the first time, an apparent saturation of the EEE is observed over a large range of electric field; between 7.5 kV/cm and 10.4 kV/cm extraction field in the liquid xenon the EEE stays stable at the level of 1%(kV/cm)${}^{-1}$. In the context of electron transport models developed for xenon, we discuss how the observed saturation may help calibrate this relative EEE measurement to the absolute EEE values. In addition, we present the implications of this result not only to current and future xenon-based dark matter searches, but also to xenon-based searches for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scatters.

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Cited by in corpus (25)

• Dark Matter Search Results from 4.2 Tonne-Years of Exposure of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment
• A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics
• Emission of Single and Few Electrons in XENON1T and Limits on Light Dark Matter
• Electron Ionization via Dark Matter-Electron Scattering and the Migdal Effect
• Investigation of background electron emission in the LUX detector
• A Review of Basic Energy Reconstruction Techniques in Liquid Xenon and Argon Detectors for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics Using NEST
• First ground-level laboratory test of the two-phase xenon emission detector RED-100
• Measurement of the scintillation and ionization response of liquid xenon at MeV energies in the EXO-200 experiment
• Investigating the XENON1T Low-Energy Electronic Recoil Excess Using NEST
• A Review of NEST Models for Liquid Xenon and Exhaustive Comparison to Other Approaches
• Correlated Single- and Few-Electron Backgrounds Milliseconds after Interactions in Dual-Phase Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chambers
• LBECA: A Low Background Electron Counting Apparatus for Sub-GeV Dark Matter Detection
• Prospects of charge signal analyses in liquid xenon TPCs with proportional scintillation in the liquid phase
• Detecting Low-Energy Interactions and the Effects of Energy Accumulation in Materials
• Development and Performance of a Sealed Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chamber
• SiPM array of Xenoscope, a full-scale DARWIN vertical demonstrator
• Design, characterization and installation of the NEXT-100 cathode and electroluminescence regions
• Calibrating the scintillation and ionization responses of xenon recoils for high-energy dark matter searches
• Calibration and characterization of the RED-100 detector at the Kalinin nuclear power plant
• Design and production of the high voltage electrode grids and electron extraction region for the LZ dual-phase xenon time projection chamber
• Design Challenges for a Future Liquid Xenon Observatory
• GRANITE: Mechanical Characterization and Optical Inspection of Large-Area TPC Electrodes
• What surfaces in the operation of noble liquids dark matter detectors
• A measurement of the mean electronic excitation energy of liquid xenon
• Operation of a dual-phase xenon detector with wavelength sensitivity from ultraviolet to infrared