A Novel Source of Tagged Low-Energy Nuclear Recoils

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method using nuclear resonance fluorescence (NRF) to generate and characterize tagged low-energy nuclear recoils, aiding dark matter and neutrino detection efforts.

Contribution

It presents a novel application of NRF as a source for tagged low-energy nuclear recoils, enhancing signal understanding in particle detection.

Findings

NRF can be used to produce tagged low-energy nuclear recoils.

NRF signals are useful for calibrating dark matter detectors.

The method improves understanding of recoil signals in neutrino experiments.

Abstract

For sufficiently wide resonances, nuclear resonance fluorescence behaves like elastic photo-nuclear scattering while retaining the large cross-section characteristic of resonant photo-nuclear absorption. We show that NRF may be used to characterize the signals produced by low-energy nuclear recoils by serving as a novel source of tagged low-energy nuclear recoils. Understanding these signals is important in determining the sensitivity of direct WIMP dark-matter and coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering searches.