First measurement of the ionization yield of nuclear recoils in liquid argon
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Nuclear Engineering
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States). Dept. of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering
Liquid phase argon has long been used as a target medium for particle detection via scintillation light. Recently there has been considerable interest in direct detection of both hypothetical darkmatter particles and coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering. These as-yet unobserved neutral particle interactions are expected to result in a recoiling argon atom O(keV), generally referred to in the literature as a nuclear recoil. This prompts the question of the available electromagnetic signal in a liquid argon detector. In this Letter we report the first measurement of the ionization yield (Qy), detected electrons per unit energy, resulting from nuclear recoils in liquid argon, measured at 6.7 keV. This is also the lowest energy measurement of nuclear recoils in liquid argon.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 1133217
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-100835; NN2003000; TRN: US1400376
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 112, Issue 17; ISSN 0031-9007
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Measurement of Scintillation and Ionization Yield and Scintillation Pulse Shape from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon
Modeling ionization and recombination from low energy nuclear recoils in liquid argon