Response of liquid xenon to low-energy ionizing radiation and its use in the XENON10 dark matter search

This dissertation focuses on developments aimed at improving the effectiveness and understanding of liquid xenon particle detectors in their use in the field of dark matter direct detection. Chapter 3 covers the XENON10 experiment, which searches for evidence of direct interactions between Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) and Xe nuclei. The 3-D position sensitive liquid xenon time projection chamber acquired 58.6 live days of WIMP search data from October, 2006 through February, 2007. The results of these data set new limits on both spin-independent and spin-dependent interactions. The spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section is constrained to be less than 4.5 x 10-44 cm2 for WIMPs of mass 30 GeV/ c2 and less than 8.8 x 10-44 cm2 for WIMPs of mass 100 GeV/c2 at the 90% confidence level. The spin-dependent WIMP-neutron and WIMP-proton cross sections are constrained to be less than 10-39 cm 2 and 10-36 cm2, respectively. Finally, the mass of the heavy Majorana neutrino, in the context of a dark matter candidate, is excluded for masses in the range 10 GeV/c2 to 2.2TeV/c2.;Chapter 4 discusses the study of the relative scintillation efficiency of nuclear recoils in liquid xenon. The two existing measurements of the relative scintillation efficiency of nuclear recoils below 20 keV lead to inconsistent extrapolations at lower energies. This results in a different energy scale and thus sensitivity reach of liquid xenon dark matter detectors. A new measurement of the relative scintillation efficiency below 10 keV, performed with a liquid xenon scintillation detector and optimized for maximum light collection is discussed. Greater than 95% of the interior surface of this detector was instrumented with photomultiplier tubes, giving a scintillation yield of 19.6 photoelectrons/keV electron equivalent for 122 keV gamma rays. The relative scintillation efficiency for nuclear recoils of 5 keV is found to be 0.14, staying constant around this value up to 10 keV. For higher energy recoils we measure a value of 0.21, consistent with previously reported data. In light of this new measurement, the XENON10 experiment's upper limits on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section, which were calculated assuming a constant 0.19 relative scintillation efficiency, change from 8.8 x 10-44 cm2 to 9.9 x 10-44 cm2 for WIMPs of mass 100 GeV/c2, and from 4.5 x 10-44 cm2 to 5.6 x 10-44 cm2 for WIMPs of mass 30 GeV/ c2.;In Chapter 6, I highlight the fact that a difficult task with many particle detectors focusing on interactions below ∼100 keV is to perform a calibration in the appropriate energy range that adequately probes all regions of the detector. Because detector response can vary greatly in various locations within the device, a spatially uniform calibration is important. A new method for calibration of liquid xenon (LXe) detectors is presented, using the short-lived 83mKr. This source has transitions at 9.4 and 32.1 keV, and as a noble gas like Xe, it disperses uniformly in all regions of the detector. Even for low source activities, the existence of the two transitions provides a method of identifying the decays that is free of background. At decreasing energies, the LXe light yield increases, while the amount of electric field quenching is diminished. Additionally, if any long-lived radioactive backgrounds are introduced by this method, it is shown that they will present less than 67x10 -6 events kg-1 day-1 keV-1 of background in the next generation of LXe dark matter direct detection searches. (Full text of this dissertation may be available via the University of Florida Libraries web site. Please check http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/etd.html)...