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arXiv · 2307.12952

Search for the Migdal effect in liquid xenon with keV-level nuclear recoils

Jingke Xu·Duncan Adams·Brian Lenardo·Teal Pershing·Rachel Mannino·Ethan Bernard·James Kingston·Eli Mizrachi·Junsong Lin·Rouven Essig·Vladimir Mozin·Phil Kerr·Adam Bernstein·Mani Tripathi
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Abstract

The Migdal effect predicts that a nuclear recoil interaction can be accompanied by atomic ionization, allowing many dark matter direct detection experiments to gain sensitivity to sub-GeV masses. We report the first direct search for the Migdal effect for M- and L-shell electrons in liquid xenon using 7.0$\pm$1.6 keV nuclear recoils produced by tagged neutron scatters. Despite an observed background rate lower than that of expected signals in the region of interest, we do not observe a signal consistent with predictions. We discuss possible explanations, including inaccurate predictions for either the Migdal rate or the signal response in liquid xenon. We comment on the implications for direct dark-matter searches and future Migdal characterization efforts.

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Jingke Xu, Duncan Adams, Brian Lenardo, Teal Pershing, Rachel Mannino, Ethan Bernard, James Kingston, Eli Mizrachi, Junsong Lin, Rouven Essig, Vladimir Mozin, Phil Kerr, Adam Bernstein, Mani Tripathi. 2023-07-24. Search for the Migdal effect in liquid xenon with keV-level nuclear recoils. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12952

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