Phonon Pulse Shape Discrimination in SuperCDMS Soudan

TL;DR

This paper explores phonon pulse shape analysis in SuperCDMS to improve background rejection in dark matter detection, demonstrating effective discrimination between electron and nuclear recoils using phonon signals alone.

Contribution

It introduces a simple phonon pulse shape parameter for background discrimination, showing promising results at low recoil energies and suggesting potential for phonon-only detection methods.

Findings

Achieved 1:1000 discrimination between electron and nuclear recoils.

Discrimination remains effective down to 7 keV recoil energy.

Phonon-only methods can complement standard background rejection techniques.

Abstract

SuperCDMS is the next phase of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment, which measures both phonon and charge signals generated by particle recoils within a germanium target mass. Charge signals are employed both in the definition of a fiducial volume and in the rejection of electron recoil background events. Alternatively, phonons generated by the charge carriers can also be used for the same two goals. This paper describes preliminary efforts to observe and quantify these contributions to the phonon signal and then use them to reject background events. A simple analysis using only one pulse shape parameter shows bulk electron recoil vs. bulk nuclear recoil discrimination to the level of 1:10^3 (limited by the statistics of the data), with little degradation in discrimination ability down to at least 7 keV recoil energy. Such phonon-only discrimination can provide a useful cross-check to the standard discrimination methods, and it also points towards the potential of a device optimized for a phonon-only measurement.