Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: A liquid argon time projection chamber, constructed for the Argon Response to Ionization and Scintillation (ARIS) experiment, is exposed to the highly collimated and quasimonoenergetic LICORNE neutron beam at the Institut de Physique Nucl\'eaire d'Orsay (IPNO) in order to study the scintillation response to nuclear and electronic recoils. An array of liquid scintillator detectors, arranged around the apparatus, tag scattered neutrons and select nuclear recoil energies in the [7, 120] keV energy range. The relative scintillation efficiency of nuclear recoils is measured to high precision at null field, and the ion-electron recombination probability is extracted for a range of applied electric fields. Single-scattered Compton electrons, produced by gammas emitted from the deexcitation of $^{7}{\mathrm{Li}}^{*}$ in coincidence with the beam pulse, along with calibration gamma sources, are used to extract the recombination probability as a function of energy and electron drift field. The ARIS results are compared with three recombination probability parametrizations (Thomas-Imel, Doke-Birks, and PARIS), allowing for the definition of a fully comprehensive model of the liquid argon response to nuclear and electronic recoils down to the few-keV range. The constraints provided by ARIS to the liquid argon response at low energy allow the reduction of systematics affecting the sensitivity of dark matter search experiments based on liquid argon.
Authors: P. Agnes, J. Dawson, S. De Cecco, A. Fan, G. Fiorillo, D. Franco, C. Galbiati, C. Giganti, T. N. Johnson, G. Korga, D. Kryn, M. Lebois, A. Mandarano, C. J. Martoff, A. Navrer-Agasson, E. Pantic, L. Qi, A. Razeto, A. L. Renshaw, Q. Riffard, B. Rossi, C. Savarese, B. Schlitzer, Y. Suvorov, A. Tonazzo, H. Wang, Y. Wang, A. W. Watson, J. N. Wilson
Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives, Laboratoire AstroParticule et Cosmologie, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules, Université Paris Diderot, University of Houston, Sorbonne Université, Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Énergies, University of California, Los Angeles, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Napoli, University of Naples Federico II, Princeton University, University of California, Davis, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Temple University
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G106933437, G1323502114, G1527675012, Collaborative Research: Direct Search for Dark Matter with Underground Argon at LNGS, Collaborative Research: R & D Toward DarkSide-G2, a Second-Generation Direct Search for Dark Matter, G431208243, CAREER: R&D for Future Noble-Liquid-Based Dark Matter Searches: Hybrid Photosensors and Intrinsic Background Rejection, G5607530210, G603588730, Collaborative Research: R & D Toward DarkSide-G2, a Second-Generation Direct Search for Dark Matter, Collaborative Research: Direct Search for Dark Matter with Underground Argon at LNGS, Collaborative Research: Direct Search for Dark Matter with Underground Argon at LNGS, Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, Earth - Planets - Universe: observation, modeling, transfer
OpenAlex ID: W2784592811