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  • Letter
  • Open Access

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

J. Xu1,*, D. Adams2, B. G. Lenardo3,†, T. Pershing1, R. L. Mannino1, E. Bernard1, J. Kingston4,1, E. Mizrachi5,1, J. Lin6 et al.

R. Essig2, V. Mozin1, P. Kerr1, A. Bernstein1, and M. Tripathi4

  • 1Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94551, USA
  • 2C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA
  • 3SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, University of California Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA
  • 5Physics Department, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
  • 6Department of Physics, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

  • *Corresponding author: xu12@llnl.gov
  • †Corresponding author: blenardo@slac.stanford.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 109, L051101 – Published 11 March, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.L051101

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 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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Phys. Rev. D 109, L051101– Published 11 March, 2024
  • Received 23 July 2023
  • Accepted 22 January 2024
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