Neutron Scattering Facility for the Measurement of Light Quenching Factors of Dark Matter Detectors at Low Temperatures

Abstract

The light yield of scintillating crystals which is quantified by light Quenching Factors (QFs) strongly depends on the kind of interaction in the crystal. For Dark Matter experiments like CRESST the precise knowledge of QFs is crucial for the discrimination of background events from possible WIMP signals. At the tandem accelerator of the Maier-Leibnitz-Laboratorium (MLL) in Garching a low-temperature scattering facility was set up, which in its current phase aims at the determination of the QFs of O, Ca, and W in CaWO₄ crystals as used in the CRESST experiment. A CRESST detector module consists of a 300 g CaWO₄ target crystal operated as a phonon detector and a separate silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) light detector to detect the corresponding scintillation light simultaneously. In order to disentangle the light yield corresponding to O, Ca and W recoils, monoenergetic neutrons (11 MeV) produced by the accelerator are scattered off an especially developed CRESST-like detector module, which is operated at mK temperatures in a dilution refrigerator. Arrays of liquid-scintillator detectors placed at fixed scattering angles allow one to identify the recoiling nuclei by a neutron time-of-flight measurement. The unique facility is suited for the characterization of different detector materials and will be a powerful tool also for the future multi-material experiment EURECA. We report on the experimental approach, the low-temperature setup and present first results.