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.

arXiv comment4 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