title: Simultaneous measurement of ionization and scintillation from nuclear recoils in liquid xenon for a dark matter experiment.
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.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department and Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA. age@astro.columbia.edu
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Aprile
authors.forename: C E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Dahl
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: de Viveiros
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Gaitskell
authors.forename: K L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Giboni
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kwong
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Majewski
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ni
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shutt
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yamashita