Free-ion yield and electron-ion recombination rate in liquid xenon

A recently proposed re-encounter model for free-ion yeild at low-LET is applied to liquid xenon. For an initial electron-ion separation given by the thermalization distance (≈ 4000–5000 nm), good agreement with measured escape probability is obtained for an encounter recombination probability ≈0.01–0.03. Analysis of homogeneous recombination at low external fields places the electron-ion recombination rate in the range of (4.0–8.5) × 1015 M−1 s−1.