First observation of isolated nuclear recoils following neutron capture for dark matter calibration

Abstract

Low-energy nuclear recoils (NRs) are hard to measure because they produce few e${}^{-}$/h${}^{+}$ pairs in solids -- i.e. they have low "ionization yield". A silicon detector was exposed to thermal neutrons over 2.5\,live-days, probing NRs down to 450\,eV. The observation of a neutron capture-induced component of NRs at low energies is supported by the much-improved fit upon inclusion of a capture NR model. This result shows that thermal neutron calibration of very low recoil energy NRs is promising for dark matter searches, coherent neutrino experiments, and improving understanding of ionization dynamics in solids.

10 pages, 6 figures, 1 table

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• First measurement of the nuclear-recoil ionization yield in silicon at 100 eV
• Observation of a nuclear recoil peak at the 100 eV scale induced by neutron capture
• Observation of a low energy nuclear recoil peak in the neutron calibration data of the CRESST-III Experiment
• Detection and Calibration of Low-Energy Nuclear Recoils for Dark Matter and Neutrino Scattering Experiments
• Intrinsic Fano factor of nuclear recoils for dark matter searches
• Neutron capture-induced silicon nuclear recoils for dark matter and CE$\nu$NS
• Neutron capture-induced nuclear recoils as background for CE$\nu$NS~measurements at reactors
• Novel coincidence detection technique for precision measurement of neutron-capture-induced nuclear recoils