Directionality preservation of nuclear recoils in an emulsion detector for directional dark matter search

TL;DR

This study evaluates nuclear emulsion detectors for directional dark matter detection, demonstrating their superior ability to preserve recoil directions at higher WIMP masses compared to other detectors.

Contribution

First detailed analysis of nuclear recoil direction preservation in realistic emulsion detectors considering all recoil atom types and granularity effects.

Findings

Nuclear emulsion outperforms other detectors for WIMP masses above 100 GeV/c^2.

First use of realistic recoil energy distribution in emulsion detector analysis.

Granularity effects influence directional performance.

Abstract

Nuclear emulsion is a well-known detector type proposed also for the directional detection of dark matter. In this paper, we study one of the most important properties of direction-sensitive detectors: the preservation by nuclear recoils of the direction of impinging dark matter particles. For nuclear emulsion detectors, it is the first detailed study where a realistic nuclear recoil energy distribution with all possible recoil atom types is exploited. Moreover, for the first time we study the granularity effect on the emulsion detector directional performance. As well as we compare nuclear emulsion with other directional detectors: in terms of direction preservation nuclear emulsion outperforms the other detectors for WIMP masses above 100 GeV/c$^2$.