Speaker
Description
The Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) is considered to be the hypothetical particle that has been the leading candidate for dark matter for decades. The PICOLON (Pure Inorganic Crystal Observatory for Low energy Neutr(al)ino) project is directly search for WIMP dark matter using ultra-pure NaI(Tl) crystals at the Kamioka underground Laboratory.
In the search for WIMP, the quenching factor (QF) of NaI(Tl) is required to determine the WIMP sensitivity. Here, QF is the scintillation light yield ratio of nuclear recoil and electron recoil at the same energy deposit. QF absolute value and its energy dependence in the low energy region (~100 keV) have been discrepant in previous studies. It is necessary to verify whether the discrepancy is due to the individual crystal differences or the effect of systematic errors.
To measure the QF, the NaI(Tl) scintillator developed at PICOLON was irradiated with 2.45 MeV monochromatic neutrons generated by a discharge-type compact D-D fusion neutron source at the Institute of Advanced Energy, at Kyoto University. The QFs of Na were obtained at six points in the range of 19 ~ 101 keV.
| Submitted on behalf of a Collaboration? | No |
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