Recent developments of the nuclear emulsion technology led to the production of films with nanometric silver halide grains suitable to track low energy nuclear recoils with submicrometric length. This im- provement opens the way to a directional Dark Matter detection, thus providing an innovative and com- plementary approach to the on-going WIMP searches. An important background source for these searches is represented by neutron-induced nuclear recoils that can mimic the WIMP signal. In this paper we pro- vide an estimation of the contribution to this background from the intrinsic radioactive contamination of nuclear emulsions. We also report the neutron-induced background as a function of the read-out thresh- old, by using a GEANT4 simulation of the nuclear emulsion, showing that it amounts to about 0.06 per year per kilogram, fully compatible with the design of a 10 kg × year exposure.
Intrinsic neutron background of nuclear emulsions for directional Dark Matter searches / Alexandrov, A.; Asada, T.; Buonaura, Annarita; Consiglio, Lucia; D’Ambrosio, N.; DE LELLIS, Giovanni; DI CRESCENZO, Antonia; Di Marco, N.; Di Vacri, M. L.; Furuya, S.; Galati, Giuliana; Gentile, V.; Katsuragawa, T.; Laubenstein, M.; Lauria, Adele; Loverre, PIER FERRUCCIO; Machii, S.; Monacelli, P.; Montesi, MARIA CRISTINA; Naka, T.; Pupilli, F.; Rosa, G.; Sato, O.; Strolin, PAOLO EMILIO; Tioukov, V.; Umemoto, A.; Yoshimoto, M.. - In: ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS. - ISSN 0927-6505. - 80:(2016), pp. 16-21. [10.1016/j.astropartphys.2016.03.003]
Intrinsic neutron background of nuclear emulsions for directional Dark Matter searches
Alexandrov, A.;BUONAURA, ANNARITA;CONSIGLIO, LUCIA;DE LELLIS, GIOVANNI;DI CRESCENZO, ANTONIA;GALATI, GIULIANA;LAURIA, ADELE;LOVERRE, PIER FERRUCCIO;MONTESI, MARIA CRISTINA;STROLIN, PAOLO EMILIO;
2016
Abstract
Recent developments of the nuclear emulsion technology led to the production of films with nanometric silver halide grains suitable to track low energy nuclear recoils with submicrometric length. This im- provement opens the way to a directional Dark Matter detection, thus providing an innovative and com- plementary approach to the on-going WIMP searches. An important background source for these searches is represented by neutron-induced nuclear recoils that can mimic the WIMP signal. In this paper we pro- vide an estimation of the contribution to this background from the intrinsic radioactive contamination of nuclear emulsions. We also report the neutron-induced background as a function of the read-out thresh- old, by using a GEANT4 simulation of the nuclear emulsion, showing that it amounts to about 0.06 per year per kilogram, fully compatible with the design of a 10 kg × year exposure.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
