Ionization efficiency for nuclear recoils in silicon from about 50 eV to 3 MeV

We perform a calculation of the nuclear recoil ionization efficiency in silicon using an improved version of Lindhard's theory, in which atomic bond breaking is modeled as a function of the initial ionic energy, the interatomic potential, and the average energy for ion-vacancy pair production. Better descriptions of the effects due to electronic stopping and straggling, charge screening, and Coulomb repulsion between ions are also incorporated. Our model provides a good description of the available data over nearly four orders of magnitude of nuclear recoil energy.