Heidelberg 2022 – scientific programme
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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 77: Search for Dark Matter 4
T 77.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 23, 2022, 16:30–16:45, T-H36
Characterizing bursts of single-electron-hole-pair events using a SuperCDMS R&D device and a sodium-22 source — •Matthew Wilson for the SuperCDMS collaboration — Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
Recently, R&D facilities within the SuperCDMS collaboration have developed and employed cryogenic, high-voltage, eV-scale (HVeV) detectors that have single-charge sensitivity. When a bias voltage is applied across these gram-sized, silicon detectors, the charge signals are amplified in the form of phonons, making the detectors sensitive to low-energy electron interactions. HVeV detectors have been previously utilized for two separate above-ground dark matter (DM) searches to set competitive constraints on low-mass DM candidates. However, these constraints are limited by the presence of an unknown, low-energy background, a large component of which appears to be bursts of single-electron-hole-pair events. One hypothesis is that these events originate from the photoluminescence of SiO2, a primary component of the detector holder material. A sodium-22 source has been placed near an HVeV detector to determine whether such burst events are induced by the high-energy gammas emitted by a radioactive source, which would support this hypothesis. This presentation shows the latest results of the investigation and characterization of this low-energy background.