The Future Role of Inorganic Crystal Scintillators in Dark Matter Investigations

Abstract

Crystal scintillators and in particular inorganic scintillators play an important role in the investigation of Dark Matter (DM) and other rare processes. The investigation of a DM signature, as the annual modulation, or the directionality technique requires the use of highly radiopure detectors able to explore the very low energy region maintaining a high stability of the running conditions. In this paper, the cases of NaI(Tl), ZnWO4 and SrI2(Eu) crystal scintillators are described in the framework of our activities at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of the INFN. Their role, the obtained results in DM investigation, as well as their potential and perspectives for the future are reviewed.

Non-accelerator particle physics in Ukraine

“…В Інституті ядерних досліджень НАН України ведуться дослідження властивостей нейтрино і слабкої взаємодії у подвійному бетарозпаді атомних ядер [43][44][45][46][47][48], пошуки гіпотетичних частинок та ефектів за межами СМ [49,50], дослідження рідкісних та гіпотетичних ядерних розпадів [51][52][53][54], вимірювання потоків нейтрино від Сонця та інших джерел [55][56][57], розроблення детекторів для пошуків темної матерії [58,59], реєстрації когерентного розсіяння нейтрино та інших рідкісних процесів [60][61][62].…”

Status and Perspectives of 2ϵ, ϵβ+ and 2β+ Decays

“…In particular, the initial material-often obtained from a commercial site-is purified or further purified by exploiting different techniques (depending on the compound in use) as electron-beam melting, chemical separation, micro-distillation, and many others. Some examples, among these techniques, are discussed in [30,31,[48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62] and the references therein. Moreover, the neutron calibrations-if any-can activate new radioactive isotopes, e.g., by neutron-capture or spallation processes with the material of the detectors and its frame/structure.…”

“…Moreover, low background crystal scintillators are being used for a long time in rare α and β decays (see e.g., [78]). Hoverer, a very wide choice of scintillators is available for DBD experiments, such as CdWO 4 (due to 106 Cd, 108 Cd, 114 Cd, 116 Cd, 180 W, 186 W), CaMoO 4 (due to 100 Mo), and their enrichments (such as 106 Cd, 116 Cd and 100 Mo) [31,[79][80][81][82][83][84] [51][52][53]58,[91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104]. Moreover, as other example, rare-earth-doped scintillators (CaF 2 (Eu), LaCl 3 (Ce), etc.)…”

The origin of room-temperature self-trapped-exciton emission in LiF nanoparticles

“…The understanding of ionizing radiation interacting with matter, specifically with inorganic wide-band-gap dielectrics, has for many decades been enabling the development of modern medical imaging and dosimetric techniques [1], calorimeter-based experiments in high-energy physics [2,3], and more recently, dark matter research [4,5]. In a simplistic picture [6,7], ionizing radiation generates electronic excitation in wide-band-gap solids on a timescale ranging from femtoseconds to picoseconds.…”