Simultaneous Measurement of Ionization and Scintillation from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Xenon for a Dark Matter Experiment
- 25 August 2006
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 97 (8) , 081302
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.97.081302
Abstract
We report the first measurements of the absolute ionization yield of nuclear recoils in liquid xenon, as a function of energy and electric field. Independent experiments were carried out with two dual-phase time-projection chamber prototypes, developed for the XENON dark matter project. We find that the charge yield increases with decreasing recoil energy, and exhibits only a weak field dependence. These results are the first unambiguous demonstration of the capability of dual-phase xenon detectors to discriminate between electron and nuclear recoils down to 20 keV, a key requirement for a sensitive dark matter search.Keywords
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