The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment (SuperCDMS) at the Soudan Underground Laboratory studied energy loss associated with Frenkel defect formation in germanium crystals at mK temperatures using in situ 210Pb sources. We examine the spectrum of 206Pb nuclear recoils near its expected 103 keV endpoint energy and determine an energy loss of (6.08±0.18) %, which we attribute to defect formation. From this result and using TRIM simulations, we extract the first experimentally determined average displacement threshold energy of (19.7+0.6-0.5) eV for germanium. This has implications for the analysis thresholds of future germanium-based dark matter searches.
Revised: July 26, 2019 |
Published: August 27, 2018
Citation
Aralis T., R. Agnese, T. Aramaki, I.J. Arnquist, E. Azadbakht, W. Baker, and S. Banik, et al. 2018.Energy Loss Due to Defect Formation from 206Pb Recoils in SuperCDMS Germanium Detectors.Applied Physics Letters 113, no. 9:092101.PNNL-SA-135936.doi:10.1063/1.5041457