Abstract
Free-electron emission by stopping recoil atoms arising from particle–atom collisions in a noble-gas medium is numerically investigated using argon as an example. We demonstrate that, during propagation through matter of recoil atoms with energies over a few keV, vacancies in their internal L-shells arise via the Pauli mechanism with a probability on the order of 100%. As a result, over 30 free electrons are released upon a single interaction act in liquid or gaseous noble gas as a working medium of a particle detector. Thereby, the sensitivity of an argon-filled particle detector is significantly enhanced. In a xenon-filled detector, Pauli ionization sets in at higher recoil-atom energies of ≳100−200 keV and, therefore, is unlikely to boost the detector sensitivity to light-dark-matter particles, which are generally expected to produce recoil atoms with energies ≲10 keV.
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6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We wish to thank M.D. Skorokhvatov for paying attention to the considered problem and interest in this analysis, as well as A.V. Grobov, I.N. Machulin, O.A. Titov, and the participants of D.V. Naumov’s seminar for our helpful discussions.
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Men’shikov, L.I., Men’shikov, P.L. & Faifman, M.P. Pauli Ionization Mechanism for Recoil Atoms in Matter. Phys. Part. Nuclei Lett. 18, 665–671 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1547477121060078
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1547477121060078