Simultaneous measurement of the light and charge response of liquid xenon to low-energy nuclear recoils at multiple electric fields

TL;DR

This study presents simultaneous measurements of light and charge yields from low-energy nuclear recoils in liquid xenon across multiple electric fields, providing crucial data for dark matter detection interpretations.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive measurement of both light and charge yields at various electric fields for low-energy nuclear recoils in liquid xenon, including an evaluation of the processes involved.

Findings

No significant dependence of yields on electric field observed

Yields measured for energies from 3-74 keV

Data enhances understanding of signal production in LXe detectors

Abstract

Dual-phase liquid xenon (LXe) detectors lead the direct search for particle dark matter. Understanding the signal production process of nuclear recoils in LXe is essential for the interpretation of LXe based dark matter searches. Up to now, only two experiments have simultaneously measured both the light and charge yield at different electric fields, neither of which attempted to evaluate the processes leading to light and charge production. In this letter, results from a neutron calibration of liquid xenon with simultaneous light and charge detection are presented for energies from 3-74 keV, at electric fields of 0.19, 0.49, and 1.02 kV/cm. No significant field dependence of the yields is observed.