MIMAC low energy electron-recoil discrimination measured with fast neutrons

Abstract

MIMAC (MIcro-TPC MAtrix of Chambers) is a directional WIMP Dark Matter detector project. Direct dark matter experiments need a high level of electron/recoil discrimination to search for nuclear recoils produced by WIMP-nucleus elastic scattering. In this paper, we proposed an original method for electron event rejection based on a multivariate analysis applied to experimental data acquired using monochromatic neutron fields. This analysis shows that a $10^5$ rejection power is reachable for electron/recoil discrimination. Moreover, the efficiency was estimated by a Monte-Carlo simulation showing that a 105 electron rejection power is reached with a $86.49\pm 0.17$\% nuclear recoil efficiency considering the full energy range and $94.67\pm0.19$\% considering a 5~keV lower threshold.