Transient thermal effects in solid noble gases as materials for the detection of Dark Matter

TL;DR

This study models transient thermal effects in solid noble gases caused by WIMP interactions, exploring their potential for dark matter detection through thermal transient analysis and phase transition thresholds.

Contribution

It provides a detailed modeling of thermal transients in solid noble gases due to WIMP recoils, highlighting their suitability for dark matter detection.

Findings

Thermal spikes can induce phase transitions in noble gases at certain energies.

Different noble gases show distinct thermal transient behaviors.

Threshold parameters for phase transitions were established.

Abstract

The transient phenomena produced in solid noble gases by the stopping of the recoils resulting from the elastic scattering processes of WIMPs from the galactic halo were modelled, as dependencies of the temperatures of lattice and electronic subsystems on the distance to the recoil's trajectory, and time from its passage. The peculiarities of these thermal transients produced in Ar, Kr and Xe were analysed for different initial temperatures and WIMP energies, and were correlated with the characteristics of the targets and with the energy loss of the recoils. The results were compared with the thermal spikes produced by the same WIMPs in Si and Ge. In the range of the energy of interest, up to tens of keV for the self-recoil, local phase transitions solid - liquid and even liquid - gas were found possible, and the threshold parameters were established.