Measurement of Scintillation Efficiency for Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon

Abstract

The scintillation light yield of liquid argon from nuclear recoils relative to electronic recoils has been measured as a function of recoil energy from 10 keVr up to 250 keVr at zero electric field. The scintillation efficiency, defined as the ratio of the nuclear recoil scintillation response to the electronic recoil response, is 0.25 ± 0.01 + 0.01 (correlated) above 20 keVr