Simulation of argon response and light detection in the DarkSide-50 dual phase TPC

P Agnes,C Cicalò,B Loer,N Pelliccia,Z Ye,A Oleinik,F Calaprice,X Li,M Wada,P Humble,M Bossa,M Verducci,A Chepurnov,L Pagani,X Xiang,C Galbiati,I James,S Bussino,P Musico,A Romani,V Cataudella,B Rossi,F Ortica,M Pallavicini,A Candela,H Wang,M Lissia,S Giagu,Y Ma,G Covone,C Zhu,Y Wang,G De Filippis,A Empl,T Alexander,Simone Sanfilippo ,O Smirnov,Donald J Hughes ,E Hungerford ,M Razeti,N Canci,A S Kubankin ,T Johnson ,I Machulin ,A Mandarano,C Stanford,K Fomenko,A Fan,B Vogelaar,D D’angelo ,A Razeto,B Schlitzer,Andrea Ianni ,J Wilhelmi,Mengyun Guan ,A Goretti ,M Cadeddu,N Rossi,G Bonfini,F Budano,Stefano Maria Mari ,D M Asner ,G K Giovanetti ,K Herner,D Sablone,M Orsini,M Wójcik ,A A Machado ,A De Candia,D Korablëv ,Changgen Yang ,A G Cocco ,S Pordes,F Di Eusanio,S Catalanotti,A Devoto,G Koh,A Watson ,G Di Pietro,G Testera,D Franco,Xiang Xiao ,W Sands,I F M Albuquerque ,E Segreto,M Carlini,B J Mount ,G Fiorillo,Y Guardincerri,W Bonivento,M Caravati,E Edkins,A Tonazzo,R Tartaglia,Y Suvorov,A Vishneva,F Gabriele,G De Rosa,M Rescigno,A Pocar,V Bocci,K J Keeter ,M Skorokhvatov ,P Cavalcante,P Trinchese,Q Riffard,M D׳Incecco ,M De Deo,K Pelczar,H O Back ,E Unzhakov ,K Biery,J Napolitano,D A Pugachev ,C Dionisi,C Giganti,G Korga,D Semenov ,C Savarese,R Milinčić ,F Granato,Giuseppe Longo ,S De Cecco,A Derbin ,M Gromov,A Alton ,C J Martoff ,C L Kendziora ,Hao Qian ,S Davini,E Pantic,K Randle,B Reinhold,A Navrer Agasson,P D Meyers ,Mariano Cadoni ,A Monte,J Maricic,M De Vincenzi,S Westerdale,Susan Walker ,Prabhjot Singh ,A Sotnikov,M Cariello,B Bottino,V Muratova ,B R Hackett ,A Renshaw ,G Zuzel

doi:10.1088/1748-0221/12/10/p10015

Abstract

A Geant4-based Monte Carlo package named G4DS has been developed to simulate the response of DarkSide-50, an experiment operating since 2013 at LNGS, designed to detect WIMP interactions in liquid argon. In the process of WIMP searches, DarkSide-50 has achieved two fundamental milestones: the rejection of electron recoil background with a power of ∼107, using the pulse shape discrimination technique, and the measurement of the residual 39Ar contamination in underground argon, ∼3 orders of magnitude lower with respect to atmospheric argon. These results rely on the accurate simulation of the detector response to the liquid argon scintillation, its ionization, and electron-ion recombination processes. This work provides a complete overview of the DarkSide Monte Carlo and of its performance, with a particular focus on PARIS, the custom-made liquid argon response model.

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