1208.5046 (Peter Sorensen)

Subtleties of searching for dark matter with liquid xenon detectors    [PDF]

Peter Sorensen

We examine the recent XENON100 dark matter search results, and show how the usual energy scale employed by this and similar experiments may lead to incorrect conclusions. For dark matter particle masses m_x < 10 GeV, a nuclear recoil from a scattering event in a liquid xenon detector is more likely to be observed in the lower left corner of the typical search box, rather than near the nuclear recoil calibration centroid. In this region of the typical acceptance box, the actual nuclear recoil energies are smaller than the usual energy scale suggests, by about a factor x2. As a result, low-mass exclusion limits may be understated.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.5046