The past few decades have seen major developments in the design and operation of cryogenic particle detectors. This technology offers an extremely good energy resolution – comparable to semiconductor ...detectors – and a wide choice of target materials, making low temperature calorimetric detectors ideal for a variety of particle physics applications. Rare event searches have continued to require ever greater exposures, which has driven them to ever larger cryogenic detectors, with the CUORE experiment being the first to reach a tonne-scale, mK-cooled, experimental mass. CUORE, designed to search for neutrinoless double beta decay, has been operational since 2017 at a temperature of about 10 mK. This result has been attained by the use of an unprecedentedly large cryogenic infrastructure called the CUORE cryostat: conceived, designed and commissioned for this purpose. In this article the main characteristics and features of the cryogenic facility developed for the CUORE experiment are highlighted. In this work, a brief introduction of the evolution of the field and of the past cryogenic facilities are given. The motivation behind the design and development of the CUORE cryogenic facility is detailed as are the steps taken toward realization, commissioning, and operation of the CUORE cryostat. The major challenges overcome by the collaboration and the solutions implemented throughout the building of the cryogenic facility will be discussed along with the potential improvements for future facilities. The success of CUORE has opened the door to a new generation of large-scale cryogenic facilities in numerous fields of science. Broader implications of the incredible feat achieved by the CUORE collaboration on the future cryogenic facilities in various fields ranging from neutrino and dark matter experiments to quantum computing will be examined.
The past few decades have seen major developments in the design and operation of cryogenic particle detectors. This technology offers an extremely good energy resolution – comparable to semiconductor ...detectors – and a wide choice of target materials, making low temperature calorimetric detectors ideal for a variety of particle physics applications. Rare event searches have continued to require ever greater exposures, which has driven them to ever larger cryogenic detectors, with the CUORE experiment being the first to reach a tonne-scale, mK-cooled, experimental mass. CUORE, designed to search for neutrinoless double beta decay, has been operational since 2017 at a temperature of about 10 mK. This result has been attained by the use of an unprecedentedly large cryogenic infrastructure called the CUORE cryostat: conceived, designed and commissioned for this purpose. In this article the main characteristics and features of the cryogenic facility developed for the CUORE experiment are highlighted. In this work, a brief introduction of the evolution of the field and of the past cryogenic facilities are given. The motivation behind the design and development of the CUORE cryogenic facility is detailed as are the steps taken toward realization, commissioning, and operation of the CUORE cryostat. The major challenges overcome by the collaboration and the solutions implemented throughout the building of the cryogenic facility will be discussed along with the potential improvements for future facilities. The success of CUORE has opened the door to a new generation of large-scale cryogenic facilities in numerous fields of science. Broader implications of the incredible feat achieved by the CUORE collaboration on the future cryogenic facilities in various fields ranging from neutrino and dark matter experiments to quantum computing will be examined.
A
bstract
The first observation of
Z
boson production in proton-lead collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per proton-nucleon pair of
s
N
N
= 5 TeV is presented. The data sample corresponds to an ...integrated luminosity of 1
.
6 nb
−1
collected with the LHCb detector. The
Z
candidates are reconstructed from pairs of oppositely charged muons with pseudorapidities between 2.0 and 4.5 and transverse momenta above 20 GeV
/
c. The invariant dimuon mass is restricted to the range 60 − 120 GeV
/
c. The
Z
production cross-section is measured to be
σ
Z
→
μ
+
μ
−
fwd
=
13.5
−
4.0
+
5.4
stat
.
±
1.2
syst
.
nb
in the direction of the proton beam and
σ
Z
→
μ
+
μ
−
bwd
=
10.7
−
5.1
+
8.4
stat
.
±
1.0
syst
.
nb
in the direction of the lead beam, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic.
Abstract We report on a search for double beta decay of $$^{130}\hbox {Te}$$ 130Te to the first $$0^{+}$$ 0+ excited state of $$^{130}\hbox {Xe}$$ 130Xe using a $$9.8\,\hbox {kg}\cdot \hbox {yr}$$ ...9.8kg·yr exposure of $$^{130}\hbox {Te}$$ 130Te collected with the CUORE-0 experiment. In this work we exploit different topologies of coincident events to search for both the neutrinoless and two-neutrino double beta decay modes. We find no evidence for either mode and place lower bounds on the half-lives: $$T^{0\nu }_{0^+_1}>7.9\cdot 10^{23}\hbox {yr}$$ T01+0ν>7.9·1023yr and $$T^{2\nu }_{0^+_1}>2.4\cdot 10^{23}\hbox {yr}$$ T01+2ν>2.4·1023yr ($$90\%\,\hbox {CL}$$ 90%CL ). Combining our results with those obtained by the CUORICINO experiment, we achieve the most stringent constraints available for these processes: $$T^{0\nu }_{0^+_1}>1.4\cdot 10^{24}\hbox {yr}$$ T01+0ν>1.4·1024yr and $$T^{2\nu }_{0^+_1}>2.5\cdot 10^{23}\hbox {yr}$$ T01+2ν>2.5·1023yr ($$90\%\,\hbox {CL}$$ 90%CL ).
We report on a search for double beta decay of $^{130}$Te to the first $0^{+}$ excited state of $^{130}$Xe using a 9.8 kg$\cdot$yr exposure of $^{130}$Te collected with the CUORE-0 experiment. In ...this work we exploit different topologies of coincident events to search for both the neutrinoless and two-neutrino double-decay modes. We find no evidence for either mode and place lower bounds on the half-lives: $\tau^{0\nu}_{0^+}>7.9\cdot 10^{23}$ yr and $\tau^{2\nu}_{0^+}>2.4\cdot 10^{23}$ yr. Here, combining our results with those obtained by the CUORICINO experiment, we achieve the most stringent constraints available for these processes: $\tau^{0\nu}_{0^+}>1.4\cdot 10^{24}$ yr and $\tau^{2\nu}_{0^+}>2.5\cdot 10^{23}$ yr.
CUPID is a proposed future tonne-scale bolometric neutrino-less double beta decay (0νββ) experiment to probe the Majorana nature of neutrinos and discover lepton number violation in the so-called ...inverted hierarchy region of the neutrino mass. In order to improve the sensitivity with respect to the current bolometric experiments, the source mass must be increased and the backgrounds in the region of interest must be dramatically reduced. The background suppression can be achieved discriminating β/γ against α events by means of the different light yield produced in the interactions within a scintillating bolometer. The increase in the number of 0νββ emitters demands for crystals grown with enriched material. LUCIFER/CUPID-0, the first demonstrator of CUPID, aims at running the first array of enriched scintillating Zn82Se bolometers (total mass of about 7kg of 82Se) with a background level as low as 10−3 counts/(keVkgy) in the energy region of interest. We present the results of the first measurement performed on three Zn82Se enriched scintillating bolometers operated deep underground in the Hall C of the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso.
Abstract The CUPID-0 detector hosted at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy, is the first large array of enriched scintillating cryogenic detectors for the investigation of $$^{82}$$ 82 Se ...neutrinoless double-beta decay ($$0\nu \beta \beta $$ 0νββ ). CUPID-0 aims at measuring a background index in the region of interest (RoI) for $$0\nu \beta \beta $$ 0νββ at the level of 10$$^{-3}$$ -3 counts/(keV kg years), the lowest value ever measured using cryogenic detectors. CUPID-0 operates an array of Zn$$^{82}$$ 82 Se scintillating bolometers coupled with bolometric light detectors, with a state of the art technology for background suppression and thorough protocols and procedures for the detector preparation and construction. In this paper, the different phases of the detector design and construction will be presented, from the material selection (for the absorber production) to the new and innovative detector structure. The successful construction of the detector lead to promising preliminary detector performance which is discussed here.
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