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Title: Data-driven modeling of electron recoil nucleation in PICO C 3 F 8 bubble chambers

Journal Article · · Physical Review D

The primary advantage of moderately superheated bubble chamber detectors is their simultaneous sensitivity to nuclear recoils from weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter and insensitivity to electron recoil backgrounds. A comprehensive analysis of PICO gamma calibration data demonstrates for the first time that electron recoils in C3F8 scale in accordance with a new nucleation mechanism, rather than one driven by a hot spike as previously supposed. Using this semiempirical model, bubble chamber nucleation thresholds may be tuned to be sensitive to lower energy nuclear recoils while maintaining excellent electron recoil rejection. The PICO-40L detector will exploit this model to achieve thermodynamic thresholds as low as 2.8 keV while being dominated by single-scatter events from coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering of solar neutrinos. In one year of operation, PICO-40L can improve existing leading limits from PICO on spin-dependent WIMP-proton coupling by nearly an order of magnitude for WIMP masses greater than 3GeVc-2 and will have the ability to surpass all existing non-xenon bounds on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon coupling for WIMP masses from 3 to 40GeVc-2.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
Contributing Organization:
PICO Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-07CH11359; SC0011702
OSTI ID:
1546026
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1600658; OSTI ID: 1777229
Report Number(s):
arXiv:1905.12522; FERMILAB-PUB-19-254-AE; PRVDAQ; oai:inspirehep.net:1737408
Journal Information:
Physical Review D, Vol. 100, Issue 8; ISSN 2470-0010
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 5 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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