Sensitivity of alkali halide scintillating calorimeters with particle identification to investigate the DAMA dark matter detection claim

Nadeau, P.; Clark, Michael; Stefano, P. C. F. Di; Lanfranchi, J.‐C.; Roth, Stephan V.; Sivers, M. v.; Yavin, Itay

doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2015.02.001

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 72 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…CsI, pure or doped, is a frequently used scintillator, for instance in neutrino physics [1], or in searches for hypothetical dark matter particles [2] that could account for most of the matter in our Universe [3]. There has been recent interest in the use of CsI as a cryogenic scintillating calorimeter for the detection of direct dark matter interactions with regular matter [4][5][6][7][8]. CsI is an appealing target for such a detector because of its high LY at low temperature and the possibility of probing new WIMP interaction parameter space [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Particle detection at cryogenic temperatures with undoped CsI

Clark

Nadeau

Hills

et al. 2018

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A:

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scintillators are widely used as particle detectors in particle physics. Scintillation at cryogenic temperatures can give rise to detectors with particle discrimination for rare-event searches such as dark matter detection. We present time-resolved scintillation studies of Caesium Iodide (CsI) under excitation of both α and γ particles over a long acquisition window of 1 ms to fully capture the scintillation decay between room temperature and 4 K. This allows a measurement of the light yield independent of any shaping time of the pulse. We find the light yield of CsI to increase up to two orders of magnitude from that of room temperature at cryogenic temperatures, and the ratio of α to γ excitation to vary significantly, exceeding 1 over a range of temperatures between 10 and 100 K. This property could be useful in separating α backgrounds from the low energy nuclear recoil signal region. We also find the time structure of the emitted light to follow similar exponential decay time constants between α and γ excitation, with the temperature behaviour consistent with a model of self-trapped exciton de-excitation. Based on these properties, undoped CsI is an interesting candidate for use in cryogenic particle detectors.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Particle detection at cryogenic temperatures with undoped CsI

Clark

Nadeau

Hills

et al. 2018

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A:

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This decade will see the direct direction experiments find dark matter or be blinded by the Sun, even underground. New technologies have thus to be further explored to ensure a smooth transition, such as directional dark matter detectors [224] like Cygnus [225,226], or alkali halide crystals as bolometers [227] such as COSINUS [228]. The search for dark matter has been long but the collective efforts of nuclear, particle and astrophysicists around the world in the new field of astroparticle physics will surely provide answers to one of the biggest questions in science [229].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annual modulation in direct dark matter searches

Froborg

Duffy

2020

J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The measurement of an annual modulation in the event rate of direct dark matter detection experiments is a powerful tool for dark matter discovery. Indeed, several experiments have already claimed such a discovery in the past decade. While most of them have later revoked their conclusions, and others have found potentially contradictory results, one still stands today. This paper explains the potential as well as the challenges of annual modulation measurements, and gives an overview on past, present and future direct detection experiments.

show abstract

“…This material, doped with Tl to enhance light output, is actively used in scintillation detectors for DM searches [594][595][596][597][598][599][600][601][602][603]. Undoped CsI is very attractive for bolometric searches for DM signals [415,604,605], particularly for the detection of the annual modulation of the DM rate [606]. Indeed, a low light yield of CsI at room temperature (a factor ∼20 lower than the light yield of Tl-doped cesium and sodium iodides [607]) can be about an order of magnitude higher at 3.4-10 K [264,608].…”

Section: Strontium Fluoridementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Both pure and Tl-doped NaI exhibit a huge light yield at low temperatures (at ∼2 K), which amounts to about 65% of the light output of NaI(Tl) at room temperature [263]. Therefore, a NaI-based LTD with particle identification is of a great interest for DM search experiments [585,605,606,609], in particular aiming at the investigation of the nature of the galactic DM signature detected in the DAMA/LIBRA and DAMA/NaI experiments with room-temperature NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors (e.g., see [424][425][426][427] and references therein). However, in addition to a low Debye temperature (as in the case of CsI, Section 3.7.1), a high hygroscopicity of NaI is a challenge for bolometric applications of this material.…”

Section: Sodium Iodidementioning

confidence: 99%

Scintillation in Low-Temperature Particle Detectors

Poda

2021

Physics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Inorganic crystal scintillators play a crucial role in particle detection for various applications in fundamental physics and applied science. The use of such materials as scintillating bolometers, which operate at temperatures as low as 10 mK and detect both heat (phonon) and scintillation signals, significantly extends detectors performance compared to the conventional scintillation counters. In particular, such low-temperature devices offer a high energy resolution in a wide energy interval thanks to a phonon signal detection, while a simultaneous registration of scintillation emitted provides an efficient particle identification tool. This feature is of great importance for a background identification and rejection. Combined with a large variety of elements of interest, which can be embedded in crystal scintillators, scintillating bolometers represent powerful particle detectors for rare-event searches (e.g., rare alpha and beta decays, double-beta decay, dark matter particles, neutrino detection). Here, we review the features and results of low-temperature scintillation detection achieved over a 30-year history of developments of scintillating bolometers and their use in rare-event search experiments.

show abstract

Sensitivity of alkali halide scintillating calorimeters with particle identification to investigate the DAMA dark matter detection claim

Cited by 11 publications

References 72 publications

Particle detection at cryogenic temperatures with undoped CsI

Particle detection at cryogenic temperatures with undoped CsI

Annual modulation in direct dark matter searches

Scintillation in Low-Temperature Particle Detectors

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About