Channeling Effect and Improvement of the Efficiency of Charged Particle Registration With Crystal Scintillators

Energy of ions (recoil nuclei) channeled along definite directions in crystals is transferred to the lattice electrons mainly. In NaI(Tl) -type scintillators, this leads to increasing the light yield from ~ 10% to ~ 100% when compared with the yield for electrons of the same energy. Taking into account this effect at processing data of DAMA/ NaI experiments in Gran Sasso, which had demonstrated the year modulation of number of signals in a range of 2–6 keV of electron equivalent, reveals that DAMA/ NaI results could be caused by ~ 6×10 -7 cm -2 s -1 flux of daemons (Dark Electric Matter Objects — presumably Planckian relic particles) falling out from strongly elongated heliocentric orbits with velocities of 30–50 km/s. The flux value and the 2–6 keV signal intensity agree rather well with values emerging from our former estimates and interpretations of ground-level and underground measurements.