A direct test of Auger cascade induced nucleation from heavy element contamination in C${}_3$F${}_8$ bubble chambers

Abstract

Understanding and quantifying the gamma-induced bubble nucleation background in clean nuclear recoil detection bubble chambers is of utmost importance to bubble chamber based dark matter searches. We present data confirming the hypothesis that large Auger cascades from high-Z elements such as iodine and xenon dramatically increase the response of C${}_3$F${}_8$ bubble chambers to gamma rays. These tests, performed with a small calibration bubble chamber filled with C${}_3$F${}_8$+$\mathcal{O}$(10) ppm xenon, show that the probability of bubble nucleation scales with the rate of xenon inner-shell vacancies, reaching values >$10\%$ per K-Shell vacancy for Seitz thresholds of interest to future dark matter searches in bubble chambers. We also place an upper limit on bubble nucleation probability for argon Auger events, relevant to large future bubble chambers which may contain some residual atmospheric argon after the active fluid fill.

arXiv comment14 pages, 7 figures. Changes from last version: revisions requested by journal reviewers, including clarifying the purpose of the argon experiments and clarifying the handling of uncertainties

References in corpus (9)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• Dark Matter Search Results from the Complete Exposure of the PICO-60 C${}_3$F${}_8$ Bubble Chamber
• Dark Matter Search Results from the PICO-60 C${}_3$F${}_8$ Bubble Chamber
• Physics reach of a low threshold scintillating argon bubble chamber in coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering reactor experiments
• Direct Measurement of the Bubble Nucleation Energy Threshold in a CF3I Bubble Chamber
• Development of Bubble Chambers With Enhanced Stability and Sensitivity to Low-Energy Nuclear Recoils
• Measurement of Charge and Light Yields for ${}^{127}$Xe L-Shell Electron Captures in Liquid Xenon
• Data-Driven Modeling of Electron Recoil Nucleation in PICO C${}_3$F${}_8$ Bubble Chambers
• A buffer-free concept bubble chamber for PICO dark matter searches

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Low-threshold response of a scintillating xenon bubble chamber to nuclear and electronic recoils