Calibration of the liquid argon ionization response to low energy electronic and nuclear recoils with DarkSide-50

Abstract

DarkSide-50 has demonstrated the high potential of dual-phase liquid argon time projection chambers in exploring interactions of WIMPs in the GeV/c${}^2$ mass range. The technique, based on the detection of the ionization signal amplified via electroluminescence in the gas phase, allows to explore recoil energies down to the sub-keV range. We report here on the DarkSide-50 measurement of the ionization yield of electronic recoils down to $\sim$180~eV${}_{er}$, exploiting ${}^{37}$Ar and ${}^{39}$Ar decays, and extrapolated to a few ionization electrons with the Thomas-Imel box model. Moreover, we present a model-dependent determination of the ionization response to nuclear recoils down to $\sim$500~eV${}_{nr}$, the lowest ever achieved in liquid argon, using \textit{in situ} neutron calibration sources and external datasets from neutron beam experiments.

11 pages, 12 figures, 1 table

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• The science and technology of liquid argon detectors
• Search for Light Dark Matter with NEWS-G at the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane Using a Methane Target
• Search for inelastic WIMP-iodine scattering with COSINE-100
• Search for dark matter annual modulation with DarkSide-50
• Long-term temporal stability of the DarkSide-50 dark matter detector
• Fermionic sub-GeV Dark Matter from evaporating Primordial Black Holes at DarkSide-50
• The ionization yield in a methane-filled spherical proportional counter
• Characterization of argon recoils at the keV scale with ReD and ReD+