Low-threshold sapphire detector for rare event searches

S. Verma, S. Maludze, M. Lee, M. Chaudhuri, V. Iyer, V. K.S. Kashyap, A. Kubik, Y. T. Lin, R. Mahapatra, N. Mirabolfathi, N. Mishra, B. Mohanty, H. Neog, A. Jastram, M. Platt

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Low mass nuclear recoil dark matter and coherent-elastic-neutrino-nucleus-scattering (CEνNS) searches confront similar challenges in choosing ultra-low threshold and large-mass detectors. We report experimental results from a 100 g single-crystal sapphire detector design with a diameter of 76 mm and thickness of 4 mm instrumented with transition edge sensors (TES). Sapphire is a crystal of aluminum oxide (Al2O3) and has been found to be a good candidate for light mass dark matter search experiments due to its lower atomic mass compared to other detector materials such as germanium and silicon. This new phonon-assisted sapphire detector was characterized to yield a baseline recoil energy resolution of 28.4 ± 0.4 eV. The detector is designed to be sensitive to low-energy rare interactions with an intention to investigate the low-mass region of dark matter phase-space and search for CEνNS at the reactor site.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number167634
JournalNuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
Volume1046
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 11 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.

Keywords

  • CEνNS
  • Low mass dark matter
  • Low temperature
  • Low threshold detector
  • Phonon detector

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