ZnWO₄anisotropic scintillator for Dark Matter investigation with the directionality technique

Abstract

Abstract. The ZnWO 4 crystal scintillator has unique features that make it very promising to realize a pioneering experiment to pursue Dark Matter investigation with the directionality technique. In particular in this detector the light output and the scintillation pulse shape for heavy particles (p, α, nuclear recoils) depend on the direction of the impinging particle with respect to the crystal axes, while the response to γ/β radiation is isotropic. The anisotropy of the light output can be considered to point out the presence in the diurnal counting rate of a Dark Matter signal produced by candidate particle inducing just nuclear recoils. In addition this crystal detector has also other important characteristics for a Dark Matter experiment: high light output, high level of radiopurity. In this paper the present performances of the developed ZnWO 4 crystal scintillator will be summarized together with the possible future improvements. Some reachable sensitivities -under given assumptions -in the investigation of DM candidate particles with the directionality technique will also be addressed.

Tests of Pauli exclusion principle violations from noncommutative quantum gravity

“…• Detectors with anisotropic response may also test the angular dependence of PEPV transitions. For example, a tempting possibility that we would like to suggest is that a good candidate for such searches is provided by [27], which was suggested for measuring the dark matter directionality (highly motivated by dark matter candidates as Mirror matter [28,29]).…”

New development of radiopure ZnWO4 crystal scintillators

“…The ZnWO 4 is a very promising crystal for this purpose offering suitable features [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. This motivated the proposal of ADAMO (Anisotropic detectors for DArk Matter Observation), a project to perform an R&D to develop low background, high quality ZnWO 4 crystals for a pioneering experiment to investigate the directionality [9,[15][16][17][18]. In this paper the recent results of the R&Ds will be briefly presented with particular regard to the recent measurements performed with a neutron generator at ENEA-CASACCIA [19].…”

Sensitivity of Solid-Scintillator Detectors to Dark Matter

“…However, only in 2013 the ZnWO 4 anisotropic scintillators were proposed [48] (Some preliminary activities were also carried out by various authors; for details see [48,50,51] and references therein). In fact, the ZnWO 4 is a very promising crystal for the DM directionality approach offering suitable features [48,[52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61].…”