1. Photoelectric absorption cross section of silicon near the bandgap from room temperature to sub-Kelvin temperature
- Author
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M. J. Wilson, M. Diamond, C. Stanford, Betty A. Young, Fernando Ponce, Robert A. Moffatt, B. von Krosigk, Blas Cabrera, and Noah Kurinsky
- Subjects
Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors ,Materials science ,Silicon ,Physics::Instrumentation and Detectors ,Band gap ,Dark matter ,FOS: Physical sciences ,General Physics and Astronomy ,chemistry.chemical_element ,02 engineering and technology ,01 natural sciences ,Temperature measurement ,Cross section (physics) ,0103 physical sciences ,010302 applied physics ,Condensed Matter - Materials Science ,Detector ,Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) ,Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,lcsh:QC1-999 ,Computational physics ,Photoelectric absorption ,chemistry ,0210 nano-technology ,Low Mass ,lcsh:Physics - Abstract
The use of cryogenic silicon as a detector medium for dark matter searches is gaining popularity. Many of these searches are highly dependent on the value of the photoelectric absorption cross section of silicon at low temperatures, particularly near the silicon bandgap energy, where the searches are most sensitive to low mass dark matter candidates. While such cross section data have been lacking from the literature, previous dark matter search experiments have attempted to estimate this parameter by extrapolating it from higher temperature data. However, discrepancies in the high temperature data have led to order-of-magnitude differences in the extrapolations. In this paper, we resolve these discrepancies by using a novel technique to make a direct, low temperature measurement of the photoelectric absorption cross section of silicon at energies near the bandgap (1.2 eV–2.8 eV).
- Published
- 2021
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