SuperCDMS: Energy Calibration of a Cryogenic Ge HV Particle Detector

The goal of the SuperCDMS collaboration is to directly detect dark matter. Potential candidates for dark matter are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). To detect WIMPs, it is important to be able to predict how a Ge/Si particle detector will respond to a dark matter signal. In particular, it is necessary to calibrate the recoil energy measured by these detectors. This paper presents the energy calibration spectrum of a SuperCDMS-HV Ge particle detector using Am-241 and a PuBe neutron source. Due to high event rate, criteria were developed to remove low-quality data arising from particle interactions that occur too soon after a previous interaction. Peaks in histograms of pulse amplitudes were identified as energy peaks from the various radioactive sources, and fits of these peaks formed the basis for generating an energy calibration function. The calibration function was used to generate the calibrated energy spectrum.