Measurements of scintillation efficiency and pulse shape for low energy recoils in liquid xenon

Results of observations of low energy nuclear and electron recoil events in liquid xenon scintillator detectors are given. The relative scintillation efficiency for nuclear recoils is 0.22 +/- 0.01 in the recoil energy range 40-70 keV. Under the assumption of a single dominant decay component to the scintillation pulse shape the log-normal mean parameter To of the maximum likelihood estimator of the decay time constant for 6 keV < E-ee < 30 keV nuclear recoil events is equal to 21.0 +/- 0.5 ns. It is observed that for electron recoils T-0 rises slowly with energy, having a value similar to 30 ns at E-ee similar to 15 keV. Electron and nuclear recoil pulse shapes are found to be well fitted by single exponential functions although some evidence is found for a double exponential form for the nuclear recoil pulse shape. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.