Scintillation of liquid neon from electronic and nuclear recoils

Abstract We have completed measurements of key scintillation properties of liquid neon. We found the nuclear recoil scintillation efficiency to be 0.26 ± 0.03 for 387 keV nuclear recoils. We also measured the time dependence of scintillation light from electronic and nuclear recoils in liquid neon, finding a decay lifetime of 14.9 ± 0.3 μs for the slower component. Pulse shape discrimination was investigated as a means of identifying event type in liquid neon.