The use of negative ions in TPCs has several advantages for high-resolution rare- event detection experiments. The DRIFT experiment, for example, has taken full advantage of this technique over the past decade in a directional search for dark matter.
This paper focuses on the surprising discovery of multiple species of ionization-created CS2 anions, called minority carriers, in gas mixtures containing electronegative CS2 and O2, identified by their slightly different drift velocities. Measurements of minority carriers in gas mixtures of CS2, CF4 and O2 are reported in an effort to understand the nature of these charge carriers. Regardless of the micro-physics however, this discovery offers significant practical advantages for experiments such as DRIFT, where the difference in arrival time may be used to fiducialize the original ionization event without an external start pulse.
High precision measurements were made of reduced mobility, lateral and longitudinal diffusion of CS2- negative ions in 40 Torr CS2 and a 30 - 10 Torr CS2 - CF4 gas mixture. The reduced mobility was found to be 353.0 +/- 0.5 cm^2 Torr / s V in CS2 and
397.4 +/- 0.7 cm^2 Torr / s V in the CS2 - CF4 gas mixture at STP. The lateral diffusion temperatures for these two gases (295 +/- 15 K and 297 +/- 6 K) were found to be in good agreement with room temperature. By contrast longitudinal diffusion temperature was found to be slightly elevated (319 +/- 10 (stat) +/- 8 (sys) K and 310 +/- 20 (stat) +/- 6 (sys) K) though given the errors, room temperature diffusion can not be ruled out. For lateral diffusion significant capture distances (0.21 +/- 0.07 mm and 0.15 +/- 0.03 mm) were measured while for longitudinal diffusion the results were not conclusive.
Data are presented from the DRIFT-IId detector housed in the Boulby mine in northeast England. A 0.8 m^3 fiducial volume, containing partial pressures of 30 Torr CS2 and 10 Torr CF4, was exposed for a duration of 47.4 live-time days with sufficient p
assive shielding to provide a neutron free environment within the detector. The nuclear recoil events seen are consistent with a remaining low level background from the decay of progeny of radon daughters attached to the central cathode of the detector. However, energy depositions from such events must drift across the entire width of the detector, and thus display large diffusion upon reaching the readout planes of the device. Exploiting this feature, it is shown to be possible to reject energy depositions from these radon decay progeny events while still retaining sensitivity to nuclear recoil events. The response of the detector is then interpreted, using the F nuclei content of the gas, in terms of sensitivity to proton spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon interactions, displaying a minimum in sensitivity cross section at 0.5 pb for a WIMP mass of 100 GeV/c^2.
We present first evidence for the so-called Head-Tail asymmetry signature of neutron-induced nuclear recoil tracks at energies down to 1.5 keV/amu using the 1m^3 DRIFT-IIc dark matter detector. This regime is appropriate for recoils induced by Weakly
Interacting Massive Particle (WIMPs) but one where the differential ionization is poorly understood. We show that the distribution of recoil energies and directions induced here by Cf-252 neutrons matches well that expected from massive WIMPs. The results open a powerful new means of searching for a galactic signature from WIMPs.
The DRIFT collaboration utilizes low pressure gaseous detectors to search for WIMP dark matter with directional signatures. A 252Cf neutron source was placed on each of the principal axes of a DRIFT detector in order to test its ability to measure di
rectional signatures from the three components of very low energy (~keV/amu) recoil ranges. A high trigger threshold and the event selection procedure ensured that only sulfur recoils were analyzed. Sulfur recoils produced in the CS2 target gas by the 252Cf source closely match those expected from massive WIMP induced sulfur recoils. For each orientation of the source a directional signal from the range components was observed, indicating that the detector is directional along all 3 axes. An analysis of these results yields an optimal orientation for DRIFT detectors when searching for a directional signature from WIMPs. Additional energy dependent information is provided to aid in understanding this effect.
