Bradley, DI and Bunkov, YM and Cousins, DJ and Enrico, MP and Fisher, Shaun and Follows, MR and Guénault, A.M. and Hayes, WM and Pickett, George and Sloan, T (1995) Potential dark matter detector? : the detection of low energy neutrons by superfluid 3He. Physical review letters, 75 (10). pp. 1887-1890. ISSN 0031-9007
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Using an existing experiment we have demonstrated in a pilot study that superfluid He-3 at 100 mu K can be used as a nuclear recoil detector sensitive to neutron and gamma interactions depositing energies down to a few hundred eV. The deposited energy is converted to He-3 quasiparticles which are detected by their damping effect on a vibrating wire resonator in the liquid. The system can be calibrated independently but a convenient fixed point is provided by the exothermic reaction n + He-3(2) = p + H-3(1) + 764 keV. Given the great potential for improvement we propose that the system might make a sensitive weakly interacting massive particle detector.