Measurement of the scintillation and ionization response of liquid xenon at MeV energies in the EXO-200 experiment

Abstract

Liquid xenon (LXe) is employed in a number of current and future detectors for rare event searches. We use the EXO-200 experimental data to measure the absolute scintillation and ionization yields generated by $\gamma$ interactions from ${}^{228}$Th (2615~keV), ${}^{226}$Ra (1764~keV) and ${}^{60}$Co (1332~keV and 1173~keV) calibration sources, over a range of electric fields. The $W$-value that defines the recombination-independent energy scale is measured to be $11.5\pm 0.5$~(syst.)~$\pm 0.1$~(stat.) eV. These data are also used to measure the recombination fluctuations in the number of electrons and photons produced by the calibration sources at the MeV-scale, which deviate from extrapolations of lower-energy data. Additionally, a semi-empirical model for the energy resolution of the detector is developed, which is used to constrain the recombination efficiency, i.e., the fraction of recombined electrons that result in the emission of a detectable photon. Detailed measurements of the absolute charge and light yields for MeV-scale electron recoils are important for predicting the performance of future neutrinoless double beta decay detectors.

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• NEXO: Neutrinoless double beta decay search beyond $10^{28}$ year half-life sensitivity
• Emission of Single and Few Electrons in XENON1T and Limits on Light Dark Matter
• A Review of Basic Energy Reconstruction Techniques in Liquid Xenon and Argon Detectors for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics Using NEST
• Discrimination of electronic recoils from nuclear recoils in two-phase xenon time projection chambers
• Projected sensitivity of the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment to the $0\nu \beta \beta$ decay of ${}^{136}$Xe
• Kiloton-scale xenon detectors for neutrinoless double beta decay and other new physics searches
• Performance of novel VUV-sensitive Silicon Photo-Multipliers for nEXO
• Investigating the XENON1T Low-Energy Electronic Recoil Excess Using NEST
• Measurement of Charge and Light Yields for ${}^{127}$Xe L-Shell Electron Captures in Liquid Xenon
• A Review of NEST Models for Liquid Xenon and Exhaustive Comparison to Other Approaches
• Determination of responses of liquid xenon to low energy electron and nuclear recoils using the PandaX-II detector
• Characterization of alpha and beta interactions in liquid xenon
• Low-energy Calibration of XENON1T with an Internal ${}^{37}$Ar Source
• Search for MeV Electron Recoils from Dark Matter in EXO-200
• The XeBRA platform for liquid xenon time projection chamber development
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• Measurements and models of enhanced recombination following inner-shell vacancies in liquid xenon
• Physics Prospects with MeV Neutrino-Argon Charged Current Interactions using Enhanced Photon Detection in Future LArTPCs
• Development of a ${}^{127}$Xe calibration source for nEXO
• Electron-ion recombination in composite interactions in liquid xenon
• Search for Double Beta Decays of ${}^{134}$Xe with EXO-200 Phase II
• A measurement of the mean electronic excitation energy of liquid xenon