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Register a new userPerformance and Fundamental Processes at Low Energy in a Two-Phase Liquid Xenon Dark Matter Detector
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We extend the study of the performance of a prototype two-phase liquid xenon WIMP dark matter detector to recoil energies below 20 keV. We demonstrate a new method for obtaining the best estimate of the energies of events using a calibrated sum of charge and light signals and introduce the corresponding discrimination parameter, giving its mean value at 4 kV/cm for electron and nuclear recoils up to 300 and 100 keV, respectively. We show that fluctuations in recombination limit discrimination for most energies, and reveal an improvement in discrimination below 20 keV due to a surprising increase in ionization yield for low energy electron recoils. This improvement is crucial for a high-sensitivity dark matter search.
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An observation of the anisotropy of dark matter interactions in a direction-sensitive detector would provide decisive evidence for the discovery of galactic dark matter. Directional information would also provide a crucial input to understanding its distribution in the local Universe. Most of the existing directional dark matter detectors utilize particle tracking methods in a low-pressure gas time projection chamber. These low pressure detectors require excessively large volumes in order to be competitive in the search for physics beyond the current limit. In order to avoid these volume limitations, we consider a novel proposal, which exploits a columnar recombination effect in a high-pressure gas time projection chamber. The ratio of scintillation to ionization signals observed in the detector carries the angular information of the particle interactions. In this paper, we investigate the sensitivity of a future directional detector focused on the proposed high-pressure Xenon gas time projection chamber. We study the prospect of detecting an anisotropy in the dark matter velocity distribution. We find that tens of events are needed to exclude an isotropic distribution of dark matter interactions at 95% confidence level in the most optimistic case with head-to-tail information. However, one needs at least 10-20 times more events without head-to-tail information for light dark matter below 50 GeV. For an intermediate mass range, we find it challenging to observe an anisotropy of the dark matter distribution. Our results also show that the directional information significantly improves precision measurements of dark matter mass and the elastic scattering cross section for a heavy dark matter.
PandaX is a large upgradable liquid-xenon detector system that can be used for both direct dark-matter detection and $^{136}$Xe double-beta decay search. It is located in the Jinping Deep-Underground Laboratory in Sichuan, China. The detector operates in dual-phase mode, allowing detection of both prompt scintillation, and ionization charge through proportional scintillation. The central time projection chamber will be staged, with the first stage accommodating a target mass of about 120,kg. In stage II, the target mass will be increased to about 0.5,ton. In the final stage, the detector can be upgraded to a multi-ton target mass. In this paper a detailed description of the stage-I detector design and performance results established during the commissioning phase is presented.
In the near future there will be the request for very large liquid Xenon (LXe) detectors for Dark Matter (DM) searches in the 50-ton range. To avoid an impractically long, single drift space of a dual-phase detector, it seems beneficial to use the single-phase technique. Since electrons then can drift in any direction, we can segment the homogeneous medium and thus avoid an excessive maximum drift path of order 4 m. The shorter detector length has several benefits, e.g. requiring a lower cathode voltage for the same drift field. We can easily split the TPC into two regions with the cathode in the center and two anodes at the top and bottom. One also can use multiple TPCs stacked on top of each other in the same liquid volume to reduce the maximum drift length even further. A further division of the drift space by installing an additional anode in the center would require S2 photons to traverse the liquid for several times the Rayleigh scattering length in LXe, which is only 30 - 40 cm. This seems to be excessive for good x - y localization. We therefore suggest a geometry of two independent TPCs with two drift spaces each. Despite earlier publications concerns persisted about the effect of shadowing. A detailed FEM model of the anode regions shows that with an aligned wire arrangement the drifting electrons impinge sideways on the anode in a narrow angular range of width 15$^{circ}$ - 20$^{circ}$. Most S2 photons are emitted in full view of the close-by PMT array. About 37% of the S2 photons are shadowed by the anode wire out of which 30% will be reflected back again on the gold plating of the wires. Thus we can observe 74% of the total S2 light. Compared to a dual-phase detector, however, we do not suffer from the extraction efficiency, sometimes reported as low as 50%.
Liquid xenon is a suitable material for a dark matter search. For future large scale experiments, single phase detectors are attractive due to their simple configuration and scalability. However, in order to reduce backgrounds, they need to fully rely on liquid xenons self-shielding property. A prototype detector was developed at Kamioka Observatory to establish vertex and energy reconstruction methods and to demonstrate the self-shielding power against gamma rays from outside of the detector. Sufficient self-shielding power for future experiments was obtained.
The CRESST-III experiment which is dedicated to low-mass dark matter search uses scintillating CaWO$_4$ crystals operated as cryogenic particle detectors. Background discrimination is achieved by exploiting the scintillating light signal of CaWO$_4$ and by a novel active detector holder presented in this paper. In a test setup above ground, a nuclear-recoil energy threshold of $E_{th}=(190.6pm5.2)$eV is reached with a 24g prototype detector, which corresponds to an estimated threshold of $sim$50eV when being operated in the low-noise CRESST cryostat. This is the lowest threshold reported for direct dark matter searches. For CRESST-III phase 1, ten such detector modules were installed in the cryostat which have the potential to improve significantly the sensitivity to scatterings of dark matter particles with masses down to $sim$0.1GeV/c$^2$.
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