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1.
We provide a new way of constraining the relative scintillation efficiency Leff for liquid xenon. Using a simple estimate for the electronic and nuclear stopping powers together with an analysis of recombination processes we predict both the ionization and the scintillation yields. Using presently available data for the ionization yield, we can use the correlation between these two quantities to constrain Leff from below. Moreover, we argue that more reliable data on the ionization yield would allow to verify our assumptions on the atomic cross sections and to predict the value of Leff. We conclude that the relative scintillation efficiency should not decrease at low nuclear recoil energies, which has important consequences for the robustness of exclusion limits for low WIMP masses in liquid xenon Dark Matter searches.  相似文献   

2.
The ionization yield in a two-phase liquid xenon dark-matter detector has been studied in keV nuclear recoil energy region. The newly obtained nuclear quenching as well as the average energy required to produce an electron–ion pair from the measurement in Seguinot (1992) are used to calculate the total electric charges produced. To estimate the fraction of the electron charges collected, the Thomas-Imel model is generalized to describe the field dependence for nuclear recoils in liquid xenon. With free parameters fitted to experimentally measured 56.5 keV nuclear recoils, the energy dependence of ionization yield for nuclear recoils is predicted, which increases as recoil energy decreases and reaches the maximum value at 2∼3 keV. This prediction agrees well with existing data and may help to lower the energy detection threshold for nuclear recoils to ∼1 keV.  相似文献   

3.
This article describes CLEAN, an approach to the detection of low-energy solar neutrinos and neutrinos released from supernovae. The CLEAN concept is based on the detection of elastic scattering events (neutrino–electron scattering and neutrino–nuclear scattering) in liquified noble gases such as liquid helium, liquid neon, and liquid xenon, all of which scintillate brightly in the ultraviolet. Key to the CLEAN technique is the use of a thin film of wavelength-shifting fluor to convert the ultraviolet scintillation light to the visible, thereby allowing detection by conventional photomultipliers.

Liquid neon is a particularly promising medium for CLEAN. Because liquid neon has a high scintillation yield, has no long-lived radioactive isotopes, and can be easily purified by use of cold traps, it is an ideal medium for the detection of rare nuclear events. In addition, neon is inexpensive, dense, and transparent to its own scintillation light, making it practical for use in a large self-shielding apparatus. The central region of a full-sized detector would be a stainless steel tank holding approximately 135 metric tons of liquid neon. Inside the tank and suspended in the liquid neon would be several thousand photomultipliers.

Monte Carlo simulations of gamma ray backgrounds have been performed assuming liquid neon as both shielding and detection medium. Gamma ray events occur with high probability in the outer parts of the detector. In contrast, neutrino scattering events occur uniformly throughout the detector. We discriminate background gamma ray events from events of interest based on a spatial maximum likelihood method estimate of event location. Background estimates for CLEAN are presented, as well as an evaluation of the sensitivity of the detector for p–p neutrinos. Given these simulations, the physics potential of the CLEAN approach is evaluated.  相似文献   


4.
We examine electron and nuclear recoil backgrounds from radioactivity in the ZEPLIN-III dark matter experiment at Boulby. The rate of low-energy electron recoils in the liquid xenon WIMP target is 0.75 ± 0.05 events/kg/day/keV, which represents a 20-fold improvement over the rate observed during the first science run. Energy and spatial distributions agree with those predicted by component-level Monte Carlo simulations propagating the effects of the radiological contamination measured for materials employed in the experiment. Neutron elastic scattering is predicted to yield 3.05 ± 0.5 nuclear recoils with energy 5-50 keV per year, which translates to an expectation of 0.4 events in a 1 yr dataset in anti-coincidence with the veto detector for realistic signal acceptance. Less obvious background sources are discussed, especially in the context of future experiments. These include contamination of scintillation pulses with Cherenkov light from Compton electrons and from β activity internal to photomultipliers, which can increase the size and lower the apparent time constant of the scintillation response. Another challenge is posed by multiple-scatter γ-rays with one or more vertices in regions that yield no ionisation. If the discrimination power achieved in the first run can be replicated, ZEPLIN-III should reach a sensitivity of ∼1 × 10−8pb · yr to the scalar WIMP-nucleon elastic cross-section, as originally conceived.  相似文献   

5.
New limits on the mean lifetime of the electron for decay into non-ionizing particles have been achieved by using a low activity liquid xenon scintillator at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory.  相似文献   

6.
A new method of searching for dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP) has been developed with the direct detection of the low energy nuclear recoils observed in a massive target (ultimately many tons) of ultra pure liquid argon at 87 K. A high selectivity for argon recoils is achieved by the simultaneous observation of both the VUV scintillation luminescence and of the electron signal surviving columnar recombination, extracted through the liquid–gas boundary by an electric field.

First physics results from this method are reported, based on a small 2.3 l test chamber filled with natural argon and an accumulated fiducial exposure of about 100 kg day, supporting the future validity of this method with isotopically purified 40Ar and for a much larger unit presently under construction with correspondingly increased sensitivities.  相似文献   


7.
Equatorial scintillations have been observed at Legon, Ghana for nearly 20 yr. The occurrence characteristics of the scintillations are reviewed, and the physical characteristics of the electron density irregularities summarized. A much more comprehensive summary of the seasonal variation of scintillation is given, and it is found to be remarkably similar to the variations in thermospheric temperature. Evidence for the suppression of scintillation during magnetic disturbances is given. Curves for the daily variation of the Faraday rotation angle φ are presented and their unusual post-sunset behaviour noted. It is suggested that this can be explained in terms of a theory presented by Rishbeth, in which the F region ionization moves with nearly the full velocity of the neutral atmospheric wind at night, after the E region conductivity has fallen to a relatively low value. This can account for the observed drift velocity of the irregularities. The rapid increase in the post-sunset horizontal velocity of the ionization together with the observed vertical rise, can account for the variations of φ. It is further suggested that the large gradients in the density and drift velocity of the ionization resulting from the mechanism suggested by Rishbeth give rise to the production of the observed F region irregularities in electron density which cause equatorial scintillation.  相似文献   

8.
I re-examine the brightness temperature problem in PKS 0405-385, which is an extreme intra-day variable radio quasar with an inferred brightness temperature of  ∼5 × 1014 K  at 5 GHz, well above the Compton catastrophe limit of  ∼1011 K  that is reached when the synchrotron photon energy density exceeds the energy density of the magnetic field. If one takes into account the uncertainty in the distance to the ionized clouds responsible for interstellar scintillation causing rapid intra-day variability in PKS 0405-385, it is possible that the brightness temperature could be as low as  ∼1013 K  at 5 GHz, or even lower. The radio spectrum can be fitted by optically thin emission from mono-energetic electrons, or an electron spectrum with a low-energy cut-off such that the critical frequency of the lowest energy electrons is above the radio frequencies of interest. If one observes optically thin emission along a long narrow emission region, the average energy density in the emission region can be many orders of magnitude lower than calculated from the observed intensity if one assumed a spherical emission region. I discuss the physical conditions in the emission region and find that the Compton catastrophe can then be avoided using a reasonable Doppler factor. I also show that MeV to 100-GeV gamma-ray emission at observable flux levels should be expected from extreme intra-day variable sources such as PKS 0405-385.  相似文献   

9.
The SOLAR-A spacecraft has spectroscopic capabilities in a wide energy band from soft X-rays to gamma-rays. The Wide Band Spectrometer (WBS), consisting of three kinds of spectrometers, soft X-ray spectrometer (SXS), hard X-ray spectrometer (HXS) and gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS), is installed on SOLAR-A to investigate plasma heating, high-energy particle acceleration, and interaction processes. SXS has two proportional counters and each counter provides 128-channel pulse height data in the 2–30 keV range every 2 s and 2-channel pulse count data every 0.25 s. HXS has a NaI scintillation detector and provides 32-channel pulse height data in the 20–400 keV range every 1 s and 2-channel pulse count data every 0.125 s. GRS has two identical BGO scintillation detectors and each detector provides 128-channel pulse height data in the 0.2–10 MeV range every 4 s and 4-channel pulse count data (0.2–0.7, 0.7–4, 4–7, and 7–10 MeV) every 0.25–0.5 s. In addition, each of the BGO scintillation detectors provides 16-channel pulse height data in the 8–100 MeV range every 4 s and 2-channel pulse count data (8–30 and 30–100 MeV) every 0.5 s. The SXS observations enable one to study the thermal evolution of flare plasma by obtaining time series of electron temperatures and emission measures of hot plasma; the HXS observations enable one to study the electron acceleration and heating mechanisms by obtaining time series of the electron spectrum; and the GRS observations enable one to study the high-energy electron and ion acceleration and interaction processes by obtaining time series of electron and ion spectra.After the launch the name of SOLAR-A has been changed to YOHKOH.  相似文献   

10.
Many current and future dark matter and neutrino detectors are designed to measure scintillation light with a large array of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). The energy resolution and particle identification capabilities of these detectors depend in part on the ability to accurately identify individual photoelectrons in PMT waveforms despite large variability in pulse amplitudes and pulse pileup. We describe a Bayesian technique that can identify the times of individual photoelectrons in a sampled PMT waveform without deconvolution, even when pileup is present. To demonstrate the technique, we apply it to the general problem of particle identification in single-phase liquid argon dark matter detectors. Using the output of the Bayesian photoelectron counting algorithm described in this paper, we construct several test statistics for rejection of backgrounds for dark matter searches in argon. Compared to simpler methods based on either observed charge or peak finding, the photoelectron counting technique improves both energy resolution and particle identification of low energy events in calibration data from the DEAP-1 detector and simulation of the larger MiniCLEAN dark matter detector.  相似文献   

11.
We consider the dissipation by Fermi acceleration of magnetosonic turbulence in the Reynolds layer of the interstellar medium. The scale in the cascade at which electron acceleration via stochastic Fermi acceleration (STFA) becomes comparable to further cascade of the turbulence defines the inner scale. For any magnetic turbulent spectra equal to or shallower than Goldreich–Sridhar this turns out to be ≥1012 cm, which is much larger than the shortest length-scales observed in radio scintillation measurements. While STFA for such spectra then contradict models of scintillation which appeal directly to an extended, continuous turbulent cascade, such a separation of scales is consistent with the recent work of Boldyrev & Gwinn and Boldyrev & Konigl suggesting that interstellar scintillation may result from the passage of radio waves through the Galactic distribution of thin ionized boundary surfaces of H  ii regions, rather than density variations from cascading turbulence. The presence of STFA dissipation also provides a mechanism for the non-ionizing heat source observed in the Reynolds layer of the interstellar medium. STFA accommodates the proper heating power, and the input energy is rapidly thermalized within the low-density Reynolds layer plasma.  相似文献   

12.
The possibility of obtaining information about small-scale inhomogenities of the electron component of the local interstellar medium (ISM) is investigated using interstellar scintillation of extragalactic radio sources. We analyze Culgoora array variability data at 80 and 160 MHz for 190 extragalactic radio sources distributed over most of the sky. The variability on time-scales of 1 month-15 years is interpreted as interstellar scintillations in rapidly-moving nearby (less than 150 pc) hot gas near shock waves in the local ISM. All-sky maps of scintillation index m averaged over 3-5 neighbouring sources and over m for time-scales of 1 month (m1) and one or several years (m12) show several maximum values for m. Locations of the maxima are insensitive to the method and number of points used for averaging. The positions of the maxima obtained in different ways agree to within 15-30 degrees on the sky; this is the angular resolution of this method. Two of the three most certain maxima are probably associated with Loop I, and the third coincides with a soft X-ray (0.1 - 0.3 keV) background maximum near the South Galactic Pole. Other less certain scintillation index maxima probably correspond to the Orion starformation region and to a soft X-ray maximum near the North Galactic Pole. A tunnel that is free of gas in the direction l = 240° is indicated by low values of m. The estimated time-scale for interstellar scintillations in these structures in the local ISM is in agreement with the time-scale for the observed radio source variations.  相似文献   

13.
《Astroparticle Physics》2002,16(3):205-234
Borexino, a real-time device for low energy neutrino spectroscopy is nearing completion of construction in the underground laboratories at Gran Sasso, Italy (LNGS). The experiment's goal is the direct measurement of the flux of 7Be solar neutrinos of all flavors via neutrino–electron scattering in an ultra-pure scintillation liquid. Seeded by a series of innovations which were brought to fruition by large-scale operation of a 4-ton test detector at LNGS, a new technology has been developed for Borexino. It enables sub-MeV solar neutrino spectroscopy for the first time. This paper describes the design of Borexino, the various facilities essential to its operation, its spectroscopic and background suppression capabilities and a prognosis of the impact of its results towards resolving the solar neutrino problem. Borexino will also address several other frontier questions in particle physics, astrophysics and geophysics.  相似文献   

14.
HEOS-2 low energy electron data (10 eV–3.7 keV) from the LPS Frascati plasma experiment have been used to identify three different magnetospheric electron populations. Magnetosheathlike electron energy spectra (35–50 eV) are characteristic of the plasma mantle, entry layer and cusps from the magnetopause down to 2–3 RE Plasma sheet electrons (energy > 1 keV) are found at all local times, with strong intensities in the early morning quadrant and weaker intensities in the afternoon quadrant. The plasma sheet shows a well defined inner edge at all local times and latitudes, the inner edge coinciding probably with the plasmapause. The plasma sheet does not reach the magnetopause, but it is separated from it by a boundary layer electron population that is very distinct from the other two electron populations, most electrons having energies 100–300 eV.We map these three electron populations from the magnetopause down to the high latitude near earth regions, by making use of the HEOS-2 low latitude inbound passes and the high latitude outbound passes (in Solar Magnetic (SM) coordinates). The boundary layer extends along the magnetopause up to 5–7 RE above the equator; at higher latitudes it follows the magnetic lines of force and it is found closer and closer to the earth, so that it has the same invariant latitudes of the system 1 currents observed by Iijima and Potemra (1976) in their region 1. The plasma sheet can be mapped into their region 2 and the cusp-entry layer-plasma mantle can be mapped into their cusp currents region. The boundary layer is observed for any Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) direction. We speculate that magnetosheath particles penetrate into the magnetosphere everywhere along the magnetopause. The electron energization, however, is observed only in the boundary layer, on both dawn and dusk side and could be due to the polarization electric field at magnetopause generated by the magnetosheath plasma bulk motion in the region where such motion is roughly perpendicular to the magnetospheric magnetic field. The electron energization is absent in the regions (entry layer and plasma mantle) where the sheath plasma motion is roughly parallel or antiparallel to the magnetospheric magnetic field.  相似文献   

15.
Lin  R. P.  Curtis  D. W.  Primbsch  J. H.  Harvey  P. R.  Levedahl  W. K.  Smith  D. M.  Pelling  R. M.  Duttweiler  F.  Hurley  K. 《Solar physics》1987,113(1-2):333-345

We describe a balloon payload designed to study the processes of energy release, particle acceleration, and heating of the active corona, in hard X-ray microflares and normal flares. An array of liquid nitrogen-cooled germanium detectors together with large area phoswich scintillation detectors provide the highest sensitivity (∼500 cm2) and energy resolution (≤0.7 keV) ever achieved for solar hard X-ray (∼15–600 keV) measurements. These detectors were flown in February 1987 from Australia on a long duration RAdiation COntrolled balloON (RACOON) flight (LDBF) which provided 12 days of observations before cutdown in Brazil. The payload includes solar cells for power, pointing and navigation sensors, a microprocessor controlled data system with VCR tape storage, and transmitters for GOES and ARGOS spacecraft. This successful flight illustrates the potential of LDBF's for solar flare studies.

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16.
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17.
Dark matter direct search experiments with scintillators need an accurate knowledge of Light Relative Efficiency Factors (REF) between electron and nuclear recoils to estimate the energy of the recoiling nuclei from the scintillation signal (if the light signal is used with this purpose) or to implement an effective background rejection based on the comparison of the scintillation with ionization or heat signals (if the light signal is used for particle discrimination). The Light REF between α and γ particles is required in some nuclear physics applications of scintillators like rare α decay searches, internal radiopurity assessment and some double beta decay searches. Two scintillating bolometers of BGO and Al2O3 were operated at 20 mK and exposed to fast neutrons, gamma rays, α particles and heavy nuclei. We measured their Light REF between γ and α particles and between electron and neutron induced nuclear recoils as a function of the deposited energy. We also measured the Light REF for O and Np ions in BGO. Results obtained for the different Light REFs were unsuccessfully compared with calculations based on a simple semi-empirical approach (with only one fitting parameter) proposed by Tretyak.  相似文献   

18.
Using observations from the ISEE-3 spacecraft, we compare the X-ray producing electrons and escaping electrons from a solar flare on 8 November, 1978. The instantaneous 5 to 75 keV electron spectrum in the X-ray producing region is computed from the observed bremsstrahlung X-ray spectrum. Assuming that energy loss by Coulomb collisions (thick target) is the dominant electron loss process, the accelerated electron spectrum is obtained. The energy spectrum of the escaping electrons observed from 2 to 100 keV differs significantly from the spectra of the X-ray producing electrons and of the accelerated electrons, even when the energy loss which the escaping electrons experienced during their travel from the Sun to the Earth is taken into account. The observations are consistent with a model where the escaping electrons come from an extended X-ray producing region which ranges from the chromosphere to high in the corona. In this model the low energy escaping electrons (2–10 keV) come from the higher part of the extended X-ray source where the overlying column density is low, while the high energy electrons (20–100 keV) come from the entire X-ray source.  相似文献   

19.
We present the results of an improved analysis of the equation of state of matter from metallic to nuclear density which takes into account: (a) in the region of low densities (?<104 g cm?3), the electron correlation energy in the lattice; (b) in the region of medium density (10411 g cm?3) a more refined discussion of the electron energy; (c) in the region of large densities (4.3×1011 g cm?3相似文献   

20.
We calculate charge state distributions of Kr and Xe in a model for two different types of solar wind using the effective ionization and recombination rates provided from the OPEN_ADAS data base. The charge states of heavy elements in the solar wind are essential for estimating the efficiency of Coulomb drag in the inner corona. We find that xenon ions experience particularly low Coulomb drag from protons in the inner corona, comparable to the notoriously weak drag of protons on helium ions. It has been found long ago that helium in the solar wind can be strongly depleted near interplanetary current sheets, whereas coronal mass ejecta are sometimes strongly enriched in helium. We argue that if the extraordinary variability of the helium abundance in the solar wind is due to inefficient Coulomb drag, the xenon abundance must vary strongly. In fact, a secular decrease of the solar wind xenon abundance relative to the other heavier noble gases (Ne, Ar, Kr) has been postulated based on a comparison of noble gases in recently irradiated and ancient samples of ilmenite in the lunar regolith. We conclude that decreasing solar activity and decreasing frequency of coronal mass ejections over the solar lifetime might be responsible for a secularly decreasing abundance of xenon in the solar wind.  相似文献   

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