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1. Low energy electronic recoils and single electron detection with a liquid Xenon proportional scintillation counter

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/18/07/P07027  

   Qi, Jianyang ; Hood, Noah ; Kopec, Abigail ; Ma, Yue ; Xu, Haiwen ; Zhong, Min ; Ni, Kaixuan ( July 2023 , Journal of Instrumentation)

   Liquid xenon (LXe) is a well-studied detector medium to search for rare events in dark matter and neutrino physics. Two-phase xenon time projection chambers (TPCs) can detect electronic and nuclear recoils with energy down to kilo-electron volts (keV). In this paper, we characterize the response of a single-phase liquid xenon proportional scintillation counter (LXePSC), which produces electroluminescence directly in the liquid, to detect electronic recoils at low energies. Our design uses a thin (10–25 μm diameter), central anode wire in a cylindrical LXe target where ionization electrons, created from radiation particles, drift radially towards the anode, and electroluminescence is produced. Both the primary scintillation (S1) and electroluminescence (S2) are detected by photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) surrounding the LXe target. Up to 17 photons are produced per electron, obtained with a 10 μm diameter anode wire, allowing for the highly efficient detection of electronic recoils from beta decays of a tritium source down to ∼ 1 keV. Single electrons, from photoemission of the cathode wires, are observed at a gain of 1.8 photoelectrons (PE) per electron. The delayed signals following the S2 signals are dominated by single-photon-like hits, without evidence for electron signals observed in the two-phase xenon TPCs. We discuss the potential application of such a LXePSC for reactor neutrino detection via Coherent Elastic Neutrino Nucleus Scattering (CEνNS).

    

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2. Cosmogenic background simulations for neutrinoless double beta decay with the DARWIN observatory at various underground sites

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-12298-w  

   DARWIN Collaboration ; Adrover, M. ; Althueser, L. ; Andrieu, B. ; Angelino, E. ; Angevaare, J. R. ; Antunovic, B. ; Aprile, E. ; Babicz, M. ; Bajpai, D. ; et al ( January 2024 , The European Physical Journal C)

   Xenon dual-phase time projections chambers (TPCs) have proven to be a successful technology in studying physical phenomena that require low-background conditions. With$$40\,\textrm{t}$$$40\text{t}$of liquid xenon (LXe) in the TPC baseline design, DARWIN will have a high sensitivity for the detection of particle dark matter, neutrinoless double beta decay ($$0\upnu \upbeta \upbeta $$$0\nu \beta \beta$), and axion-like particles (ALPs). Although cosmic muons are a source of background that cannot be entirely eliminated, they may be greatly diminished by placing the detector deep underground. In this study, we used Monte Carlo simulations to model the cosmogenic background expected for the DARWIN observatory at four underground laboratories: Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (LSM) and SNOLAB. We present here the results of simulations performed to determine the production rate of$${}^{137}$$${}^{137}$Xe, the most crucial isotope in the search for$$0\upnu \upbeta \upbeta $$$0\nu \beta \beta$of$${}^{136}$$${}^{136}$Xe. Additionally, we explore the contribution that other muon-induced spallation products, such as other unstable xenon isotopes and tritium, may have on the cosmogenic background.

    

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3. Scintillating Bubble Chambers for Rare Event Searches

   https://doi.org/10.3390/universe9080346  

   Alfonso-Pita, Ernesto ; Behnke, Edward ; Bressler, Matthew ; Broerman, Benjamin ; Clark, Kenneth ; Corbett, Jonathan ; Dahl, C. Eric ; Dering, Koby ; de St. Croix, Austin ; Durnford, Daniel ; et al ( August 2023 , Universe)

   Baracchini, Elisabetta (Ed.)

   The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is developing liquid-noble bubble chambers for the detection of sub-keV nuclear recoils. These detectors benefit from the electron recoil rejection inherent in moderately-superheated bubble chambers with the addition of energy reconstruction provided from the scintillation signal. The ability to measure low-energy nuclear recoils allows the search for GeV-scale dark matter and the measurement of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering on argon from MeV-scale reactor antineutrinos. The first physics-scale detector, SBC-LAr10, is in the commissioning phase at Fermilab, where extensive engineering and calibration studies will be performed. In parallel, a functionally identical low-background version, SBC-SNOLAB, is being built for a dark matter search underground at SNOLAB. SBC-SNOLAB, with a 10 kg-yr exposure, will have sensitivity to a dark matter–nucleon cross section of 2×10−42 cm2 at 1 GeV/c2 dark matter mass, and future detectors could reach the boundary of the argon neutrino fog with a tonne-yr exposure. In addition, the deployment of an SBC detector at a nuclear reactor could enable neutrino physics investigations including measurements of the weak mixing angle and searches for sterile neutrinos, the neutrino magnetic moment, and the light Z’ gauge boson.

    

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4. Xenon-1T excess as a possible signal of a sub-GeV hidden sector dark matter

   https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2021)229  

   Aboubrahim, Amin ; Klasen, Michael ; Nath, Pran ( February 2021 , Journal of High Energy Physics)

   null (Ed.)

   A bstract We present a particle physics model to explain the observed enhancement in the Xenon-1T data at an electron recoil energy of 2.5 keV. The model is based on a U(1) extension of the Standard Model where the dark sector consists of two essentially mass degenerate Dirac fermions in the sub-GeV region with a small mass splitting interacting with a dark photon. The dark photon is unstable and decays before the big bang nucleosynthesis, which leads to the dark matter constituted of two essentially mass degenerate Dirac fermions. The Xenon-1T excess is computed via the inelastic exothermic scattering of the heavier dark fermion from a bound electron in xenon to the lighter dark fermion producing the observed excess events in the recoil electron energy. The model can be tested with further data from Xenon-1T and in future experiments such as SuperCDMS. 

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5. Observation of two-neutrino double electron capture in 124Xe with XENON1T

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1124-4  

   E. Aprile, 1J. Aalbers ( April 2019 , Nature)

   Two-neutrino double electron capture (2νECEC) is a second-order Weak process with predictedhalf-lives that surpass the age of the Universe by many orders of magnitude [1]. Until now, indi-cations for 2νECEC decays have only been seen for two isotopes,78Kr [2, 3] and130Ba [4, 5], andinstruments with very low background levels are needed to detect them directly with high statisticalsignificance [6, 7]. The 2νECEC half-life provides an important input for nuclear structure models[8–14] and its measurement represents a first step in the search for the neutrinoless double electroncapture processes (0νECEC). A detection of the latter would have implications for the nature of theneutrino and give access to the absolute neutrino mass [15–17]. Here we report on the first directobservation of 2νECEC in124Xe with the XENON1T Dark Matter detector. The significance of thesignal is 4.4σand the corresponding half-lifeT2νECEC1/2= (1.8±0.5stat±0.1sys)×1022y is the longestever measured directly. This study demonstrates that the low background and large target massof xenon-based Dark Matter detectors make them well suited to measuring other rare processes aswell, and it highlights the broad physics reach for even larger next-generation experiments 

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