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arXiv · 1205.0973

Low energy electron/recoil discrimination for directional Dark Matter detection

J. Billard·F. Mayet·D. Santos
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Abstract

Directional detection is a promising Dark Matter search strategy. Even though it could accommodate to a sizeable background contamination, electron/recoil discrimination remains a key and challenging issue as for direction-insensitive detectors. The measurement of the 3D track may be used to discriminate electrons from nuclear recoils. While a high rejection power is expected above 20 keV ionization, a dedicated data analysis is needed at low energy. After identifying discriminant observables, a multivariate analysis, namely a Boosted Decision Tree, is proposed, enabling an efficient event tagging for Dark Matter search. We show that it allows us to optimize rejection while keeping a rather high efficiency which is compulsory for rare event search.With respect to a sequential analysis, the rejection is about 20 times higher with a multivariate analysis, for the same Dark Matter exclusion limit.

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J. Billard, F. Mayet, D. Santos. 2012-07-11. Low energy electron/recoil discrimination for directional Dark Matter detection. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516%2F2012%2F07%2F020

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