Prospect of undoped inorganic crystals at 77 Kelvin for low-mass dark matter search at Spallation Neutron Source

Understand

Investigated in this work were sensitivities of a prototype detector for the detection of low-mass dark matter particles produced at the Spallation Neutron Source at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in two years of data taking.

• The presumed prototype consisted of 10 kg undoped CsI or NaI scintillation crystals directly coupled with SiPM arrays operated at 77 K.
• Compared to the COHERENT CsI(Na) detector, a much higher light yield was assumed for the prototype.
• An experiment with a cylindrical 1~kg undoped CsI crystal coupled directly to two photomultiplier tubes at about 77~K was conducted as the first step to verify the idea.