First measurement of discrimination between helium and electron recoils in liquid xenon for low-mass dark matter searches

Abstract

We report the first measurement of discrimination between low-energy helium recoils and electron recoils in liquid xenon. This result is relevant to proposed low-mass dark matter searches which seek to dissolve light target nuclei in the active volume of liquid-xenon time projection chambers. Low-energy helium recoils were produced by degrading $\alpha$ particles from ${}^{210}$Po with a gold foil situated on the cathode of a liquid xenon time-projection chamber. The resulting population of helium recoil events is well separated from electron recoils and is also offset from the expected position of xenon nuclear recoil events.

4 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Exploring light dark matter with the Migdal effect in hydrogen-doped liquid xenon
• Design, characterization and installation of the NEXT-100 cathode and electroluminescence regions
• Why would you put a flashlight in a dark matter detector?
• HydroX, a light dark matter search with hydrogen-doped liquid xenon time projection chambers