IDM2010

26-30 July 2010
Montpellier 2 University
Europe/Paris timezone

Lowering the low-energy threshold of xenon-based detectors

26 Jul 2010, 14:20
20m
Amphithéatre Dumontet (Montpellier 2 University)

Amphithéatre Dumontet

Montpellier 2 University

Place Eugene Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier Cedex 5 FRANCE

Speaker

Dr Peter Sorensen (LLNL)

Description

The XENON10 Experiment has already reported exclusion limits for spin-independent, spin-dependent and inelastic couplings of nuclei to particle dark matter. Recently, there has been considerable (perhaps, renewed) interest in light-mass $\mathcal{O}(10)$~GeV dark matter candidates. In this mass range, the sensitivity of XENON10 drops sharply, due to the low-energy threshold. The low-energy threshold is limited by the collection of primary scintillation photons following a particle interaction, and begins to drop between $5-8$~keV nuclear recoil energy. We discuss recent modeling of that threshold, and show how this affects the resulting sensitivity of the experiment. The methods are applicable to other xenon-based detectors such as XENON100 and LUX. Finally, we explore the possibility of using only the proportional scintillation signal (the ionization channel). In so doing, traditional S2/S1 discrimination must be abandoned, but the resulting energy threshold of $\sim1$~keV nuclear recoil energy leads to interesting constraints on viable dark matter models. This work will also be of interest to the possibile detection of coherent neutrino scattering.

Primary author

Dr Peter Sorensen (LLNL)

Co-author

Collaboration XENON10 ((multiple))

 Slides