First measurement of the nuclear-recoil ionization yield in silicon at 100 eV

Abstract

We measured the nuclear--recoil ionization yield in silicon with a cryogenic phonon-sensitive gram-scale detector. Neutrons from a mono-energetic beam scatter off of the silicon nuclei at angles corresponding to energy depositions from 4\,keV down to 100\,eV, the lowest energy probed so far. The results show no sign of an ionization production threshold above 100\,eV. These results call for further investigation of the ionization yield theory and a comprehensive determination of the detector response function at energies below the keV scale.

References in corpus (11)

• Observation of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering
• SENSEI: Direct-Detection Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Shallow Underground Run Using a Prototype Skipper-CCD
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• Atomic limits in the search for galactic dark matter
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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Low-Energy Backgrounds in Solid-State Phonon and Charge Detectors
• Improved Modelling of Detector Response Effects in Phonon-based Crystal Detectors used for Dark Matter Searches
• First demonstration of a TES based cryogenic Li${}_2$MoO${}_4$detector for neutrinoless double beta decay search
• Modeling Athermal Phonons in Novel Materials using the G4CMP Simulation Toolkit
• Searches for CEνNS and Physics beyond the Standard Model using Skipper-CCDs at CONNIE
• Nuclear and electron scattering by neutrinos and dark matter in condensed systems
• Molecular Dynamics Simulations on Nuclear Recoils in Silicon Crystals towards Single Electron-Hole Pair Ionization Yields
• Novel coincidence detection technique for precision measurement of neutron-capture-induced nuclear recoils
• Performance of a SuperCDMS HVeV Detector with Sub-eV Energy Resolution and Single Charge-sensitivity