The future
Ricochet
experiment aims to search for new physics in the electroweak sector by measuring the Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering process from reactor antineutrinos with high ...precision down to the sub-100 eV nuclear recoil energy range. While the
Ricochet
collaboration is currently building the experimental setup at the reactor site, it is also finalizing the cryogenic detector arrays that will be integrated into the cryostat at the Institut Laue Langevin in early 2024. In this paper, we report on recent progress from the Ge cryogenic detector technology, called the CryoCube. More specifically, we present the first demonstration of a 30 eVee (electron equivalent) baseline ionization resolution (RMS) achieved with an early design of the detector assembly and its dedicated High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) based front-end electronics with a total input capacitance of about 40 pF. This represents an order of magnitude improvement over the best ionization resolutions obtained on similar phonon-and-ionization germanium cryogenic detectors from the EDELWEISS and SuperCDMS dark matter experiments, and a factor of three improvement compared to the first fully-cryogenic HEMT-based preamplifier coupled to a CDMS-II germanium detector with a total input capacitance of 250 pF. Additionally, we discuss the implications of these results in the context of the future
Ricochet
experiment and its expected background mitigation performance.
Abstract A new A/Q=7 injector is under development for the SPIRAL2 accelerator at Caen, France (NEWGAIN project). A new 28 GHz superconducting electron cyclotron resonance ion source named ASTERICS ...is under design for this project. The source features a modern cryostat and a large plasma chamber (91 mm radius and 600 mm length). The physical and technical motivations for a larger plasma volume are detailed and estimates of expected beam intensities enhancement are discussed. The source will mainly produce metallic ion beams: the concept of a temperature-controlled liner (up to 900°C) to stabilize high vapor pressure metal re-evaporation in the source is presented. The preliminary design of the ion source and its superconducting magnet are described.
Ricochet Progress and Status Augier, C.; Beaulieu, G.; Belov, V. ...
Journal of low temperature physics,
08/2023, Volume:
212, Issue:
3-4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We present an overview of recent progress toward the
Ricochet
coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CE
ν
NS) experiment. The ILL research reactor in Grenoble, France has been selected as the ...experiment site, after in situ studies of vibration and particle backgrounds. We present background rate estimates specific to that site, along with descriptions of the planned CryoCube and Q-Array detector payloads.
Ultracold-neutron infrastructure for the gravitational spectrometer GRANIT Schmidt-Wellenburg, P.; Andersen, K.H.; Courtois, P. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
12/2009, Volume:
611, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The gravitational spectrometer GRANIT will be set up at the Institut Laue Langevin. It will profit from the high ultracold neutron density produced by a dedicated source. A monochromator made of ...crystals from graphite intercalated with potassium will provide a neutron beam with 8.9
Å incident on the source. The source employs superthermal conversion of cold neutrons in superfluid helium, in a vessel made from BeO ceramics with Be windows. A special extraction technique has been tested which feeds the spectrometer only with neutrons with a vertical velocity component
v
⊥
≤
20
cm
s
-
1
, thus keeping the density in the source high. This new source is expected to provide a density of up to
ρ
=
800
cm
-
3
for the spectrometer.
We present a method to measure the resonance transitions between the gravitationally bound quantum states of neutrons in the GRANIT spectrometer. The purpose of GRANIT is to improve the accuracy of ...measurement of the quantum states parameters by several orders of magnitude, taking advantage of long storage of ultracold neutrons at specular trajectories. The transitions could be excited using a periodic spatial variation of a magnetic field gradient. If the frequency of such a perturbation (in the frame of a moving neutron) coincides with a resonance frequency defined by the energy difference of two quantum states, the transition probability will sharply increase. The GRANIT experiment is motivated by searches for short-range interactions (in particular spin-dependent interactions), by studying the interaction of a quantum system with a gravitational field, by searches for extensions of the Standard model, by the unique possibility to check the equivalence principle for an object in a quantum state and by studying various quantum optics phenomena.
A detector with a very specific design using liquid Xenon (LXe) in the scintillation mode is studied for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) of small animals. Two prototype modules equipped with ...Position Sensitive Photo Multiplier Tubes (PSPMTs) operating in the VUV range (178nm) and at 165K were built and studied in coincidence. This paper reports on energy, time and spatial resolution capabilities of this experimental test bench. Furthermore, these experimental results were used to perform the first image reconstruction of a 22Na source placed in the experimental setup.
Results from a prototype TES detector for the Ricochet experiment Augier, C.; Baulieu, G.; Belov, V. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
12/2023, Volume:
1057
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEνNS) offers valuable sensitivity to physics beyond the Standard Model. The Ricochet experiment will use cryogenic solid-state detectors to perform a ...precision measurement of the CEνNS spectrum induced by the high neutrino flux from the Institut Laue-Langevin nuclear reactor. The experiment will employ an array of detectors, each with a mass of ∼30 g and a targeted energy threshold of 50 eV. Nine of these detectors (the “Q-Array”) will be based on a novel Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) readout style, in which the TES devices are thermally coupled to the absorber using a gold wire bond. We present initial characterization of a Q-Array-style detector using a 1 gram silicon absorber, obtaining a baseline root-mean-square resolution of less than 40 eV.
The future
Ricochet
experiment aims at searching for new physics in the electroweak sector by providing a high precision measurement of the Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CENNS) ...process down to the sub-100 eV nuclear recoil energy range. The experiment will deploy a kg-scale low-energy-threshold detector array combining Ge and Zn target crystals 8.8 m away from the 58 MW research nuclear reactor core of the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France. Currently, the
Ricochet
Collaboration is characterizing the backgrounds at its future experimental site in order to optimize the experiment’s shielding design. The most threatening background component, which cannot be actively rejected by particle identification, consists of keV-scale neutron-induced nuclear recoils. These initial fast neutrons are generated by the reactor core and surrounding experiments (reactogenics), and by the cosmic rays producing primary neutrons and muon-induced neutrons in the surrounding materials. In this paper, we present the
Ricochet
neutron background characterization using
3
He proportional counters which exhibit a high sensitivity to thermal, epithermal and fast neutrons. We compare these measurements to the
Ricochet
Geant4 simulations to validate our reactogenic and cosmogenic neutron background estimations. Eventually, we present our estimated neutron background for the future
Ricochet
experiment and the resulting CENNS detection significance. Our results show that depending on the effectiveness of the muon veto, we expect a total nuclear recoil background rate between 44 ± 3 and 9 ± 2 events/day/kg in the CENNS region of interest, i.e. between 50 eV and 1 keV. We therefore found that the
Ricochet
experiment should reach a statistical significance of 4.6 to 13.6
σ
for the detection of CENNS after one reactor cycle, when only the limiting neutron background is considered.
A measurement of the cosmic ray positron fraction e+/(e++e−) in the energy range of 1–30 GeV is presented. The measurement is based on data taken by the AMS-01 experiment during its 10 day Space ...Shuttle flight in June 1998. A proton background suppression on the order of 106 is reached by identifying converted bremsstrahlung photons emitted from positrons.
Status of the GRANIT Facility Roulier, Damien; Vezzu, Francis; Baeßler, Stefan ...
Advances in High Energy Physics,
01/2015, Volume:
2015
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The GRANIT facility is a follow-up project, which is motivated by the recent discovery of gravitational quantum states of ultracold neutrons. The goal of the project is to approach the ultimate ...accuracy in measuring parameters of such quantum states and also to apply this phenomenon and related experimental techniques to a broad range of applications in particle physics as well as in surface and nanoscience studies. We overview the current status of this facility, the recent test measurements, and the nearest prospects.
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