The scintillation and ionization yield of liquid xenon for nuclear recoils

TL;DR

This paper reports precise measurements of scintillation and ionization yields in liquid xenon for nuclear recoils, crucial for dark matter detection sensitivity, with results aligning with theoretical predictions and enabling lower energy thresholds.

Contribution

It provides new, high-precision measurements of ff and Q_y for nuclear recoils in xenon, improving understanding of detector response for dark matter searches.

Findings

ff measurement agrees with theoretical predictions above 15 keV.

Q_y measurements are consistent with previous data.

Achieved a lower energy threshold of 4 keV.

Abstract

XENON10 is an experiment designed to directly detect particle dark matter. It is a dual phase (liquid/gas) xenon time-projection chamber with 3D position imaging. Particle interactions generate a primary scintillation signal (S1) and ionization signal (S2), which are both functions of the deposited recoil energy and the incident particle type. We present a new precision measurement of the relative scintillation yield \leff and the absolute ionization yield Q_y, for nuclear recoils in xenon. A dark matter particle is expected to deposit energy by scattering from a xenon nucleus. Knowledge of \leff is therefore crucial for establishing the energy threshold of the experiment; this in turn determines the sensitivity to particle dark matter. Our \leff measurement is in agreement with recent theoretical predictions above 15 keV nuclear recoil energy, and the energy threshold of the measurement is 4 keV. A knowledge of the ionization yield \Qy is necessary to establish the trigger threshold of the experiment. The ionization yield \Qy is measured in two ways, both in agreement with previous measurements and with a factor of 10 lower energy threshold.