First measurement of nuclear recoil head-tail sense in a fiducialised WIMP dark matter detector

作者:Battat J B R; Daw E; Ezeribe A C*; Gauvreau J L; Harton J L; Lafler R; Lee E R; Loomba D; Lumnah A; Miller E H; Mouton F; Murphy A StJ; Paling S M; Phan N S; Robinson M; Sadler S W; Scarff A; Schuckman F G II; Snowden Ifft D P; Spooner N J C
来源:Journal of Instrumentation, 2016, 11(10): P10019.
DOI:10.1088/1748-0221/11/10/P10019

摘要

Recent computational results suggest that directional dark matter detectors have potential to probe for WIMP dark matter particles below the neutrino floor. The DRIFT-IId detector used in this work is a leading directional WIMP search time projection chamber detector. We report the first measurements of the detection of the directional nuclear recoils in a fully fiducialised low-pressure time projection chamber. In this new operational mode, the distance between each event vertex and the readout plane is determined by the measurement of minority carriers produced by adding a small amount of oxygen to the nominal CS2+CF4 target gas mixture. The CS2+CF4+O-2 mixture has been shown to enable background-free operation at current sensitivities. Sulfur, fluorine, and carbon recoils were generated using neutrons emitted from a Cf-252 source positioned at different locations around the detector. Measurement of the relative energy loss along the recoil tracks allowed the track vector sense, or the so-called head-tail asymmetry parameter, to be deduced. Results show that the previously reported observation of head-tail sensitivity in pure CS2 is well retained after the addition of oxygen to the gas mixture.

  • 出版日期2016-10