Proposal of a Geiger-geometry single-phase liquid xenon Time Projection Chamber as potential detector technique for dark matter direct search

Abstract

Dual phase time projection chamber using liquid xenon as target material is one of most successful detectors for dark matter direct search, and has improved the sensitivities of searching for weakly interacting massive particles by almost five orders of magnitudes in past several decades. However, it still remains a great challenge for dual phase liquid xenon time projection chamber to be used as the detector in next-generation dark matter search experiments (∼ 50 tonne sensitive mass), in terms of reaching sufficiently high field strength for drifting electrons, and sufficiently low background rate. Here we propose a single phase liquid xenon time projection chamber with detector geometry similar to a Geiger counter, as a potential detector technique for future dark matter search, which trades off field uniformity for less isolated charge signals. Preliminary field simulation and signal reconstruction study have shown that such single phase time projection chamber is technically feasible and can have sufficiently good signal reconstruction performance for dark matter direct search.