Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 81: Search for Dark Matter III

T 81.1: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2026, 16:15–16:30, AM 00.014

Study of few-electron backgrounds in the XENONnT detector — •Sophie Armbruster — Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg

When searching for light-mass dark matter with low-energy ionization signals down to the level of a single extracted electron using a dual-phase liquid xenon time projection chamber, it is crucial to understand and mitigate ionization backgrounds in the few-electron regime. Delayed single- and few-electron emissions are small charge signals that appear after a large charge signal but do not stem from independent low-energy interactions. Possible origins include photoionization processes, electron trapping by impurities,and temporary trapping of electrons at the liquid*gas interface. This talk presents a dedicated study of these delayed electron emissions using XENONnT data, focusing on their correlations with detector parameters. The results provide new insight into the phenomenology of few-electron backgrounds and support improved background modeling for future light dark matter searches with liquid xenon detectors.

Keywords: few-electron background; XENONnT; Delayed electron emission; Dark Matter