NEST: A Comprehensive Model for Scintillation Yield in Liquid Xenon

TL;DR

The paper introduces NEST, a comprehensive and adaptable model for scintillation yield in liquid xenon, unifying various concepts and data to improve detector calibration, design, and understanding of nuclear and electron recoil processes.

Contribution

It presents a new unified model for liquid xenon scintillation yield that incorporates diverse data and definitions, facilitating better detector calibration and extension to other noble gases.

Findings

Improved understanding of electron recoil scintillation yield.

Enhanced description of nuclear recoil processes.

Implementation of a flexible Geant4-based simulation.

Abstract

A comprehensive model for explaining scintillation yield in liquid xenon is introduced. We unify various definitions of work function which abound in the literature and incorporate all available data on electron recoil scintillation yield. This results in a better understanding of electron recoil, and facilitates an improved description of nuclear recoil. An incident gamma energy range of O(1 keV) to O(1 MeV) and electric fields between 0 and O(10 kV/cm) are incorporated into this heuristic model. We show results from a Geant4 implementation, but because the model has a few free parameters, implementation in any simulation package should be simple. We use a quasi-empirical approach, with an objective of improving detector calibrations and performance verification. The model will aid in the design and optimization of future detectors. This model is also easy to extend to other noble elements. In this paper we lay the foundation for an exhaustive simulation code which we call NEST (Noble Element Simulation Technique).