Kavli Affiliate: D. B. Macfarlane
| First 5 Authors: SuperCDMS Collaboration, M. F. Albakry, I. Alkhatib, D. W. P. Amaral, T. Aralis
| Summary:
Two photo-neutron sources, $^{88}$Y$^{9}$Be and $^{124}$Sb$^{9}$Be, have been
used to investigate the ionization yield of nuclear recoils in the CDMSlite
germanium detectors by the SuperCDMS collaboration. This work evaluates the
yield for nuclear recoil energies between 1 keV and 7 keV at a temperature of
$sim$ 50 mK. We use a Geant4 simulation to model the neutron spectrum assuming
a charge yield model that is a generalization of the standard Lindhard model
and consists of two energy dependent parameters. We perform a likelihood
analysis using the simulated neutron spectrum, modeled background, and
experimental data to obtain the best fit values of the yield model. The
ionization yield between recoil energies of 1 keV and 7 keV is shown to be
significantly lower than predicted by the standard Lindhard model for
germanium. There is a general lack of agreement among different experiments
using a variety of techniques studying the low-energy range of the nuclear
recoil yield, which is most critical for interpretation of direct dark matter
searches. This suggests complexity in the physical process that many direct
detection experiments use to model their primary signal detection mechanism and
highlights the need for further studies to clarify underlying systematic
effects that have not been well understood up to this point.
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