Calibration Plan for the SBC 10-kg Liquid Argon Detector with 100 eV Target Threshold

TL;DR

This paper proposes a detailed calibration plan for a 10-kg liquid argon bubble chamber designed for low-threshold dark matter and neutrino detection, combining novel techniques to measure sub-keV nuclear recoils.

Contribution

It introduces a calibration strategy using photoneutron scattering, nuclear Thomson scattering, and thermal neutron capture for low-threshold noble liquid bubble chambers.

Findings

Calibration methods enable precise measurement of sub-keV nuclear recoils.

The plan supports improved dark matter and neutrino detection sensitivity.

Techniques can be applied to future low-background noble liquid experiments.

Abstract

The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) Collaboration is designing a new generation of low background, noble liquid bubble chamber experiments with sub-keV nuclear recoil threshold. These experiments combine the electronic recoil blindness of a bubble chamber with the energy resolution of noble liquid scintillation, and maintain electron recoil discrimination at higher degrees of superheat (lower nuclear recoil thresholds) than Freon-based bubble chambers. A 10-kg liquid argon bubble chamber has the potential to set world leading limits on the dark matter nucleon cross-section for $O(\mathrm{GeV}/c^{2})$ masses, and to perform a high statistics coherent elastic neutrino nuclear scattering measurement with reactor neutrinos. This work presents a detailed calibration plan to measure the detector response of these experiments, combining photoneutron scattering with two new techniques to induce sub-keV nuclear recoils: nuclear Thomson scattering and thermal neutron capture.