Superconducting technology to reach new limits in neutrino physics – Wouter Van De Pontseele (MIT)

Thursday 2 Nov 2023, 12:30 → 13:30 America/Los_Angeles

48/2-224 - Madrone (SLAC)

Superconducting technologies have been developed and employed with great success by the quantum information science community. 

More and more, these technologies show promise for fundamental physics. I want to sketch some of their possible advantages in the context of the Ricochet and Project 8 neutrino experiments.

Project 8 aims to measure the neutrino mass using the observation of cyclotron radiation from tritium decay electrons. To collect and detect this attowatt power signal, we investigate the quantum-limited readout of resonant cavities using Travelling Wave Parametric Amplifiers (TWPA) at MIT. These amplifiers are appropriate for broadband microwave amplification with a high dynamic range that could suit both Project 8 and Ricochet.

The Ricochet experiment aims to detect coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering at the nuclear research reactor in Grenoble, France. 

The experiment will start data-taking in 2024 with two complementary detector technologies, both employing cryogenic calorimeters. 

One of the two detector technologies envisaged by Ricochet has a target mass consisting of superconducting crystals.
When a neutrino interacts coherently with a nucleus in a superconducting crystal lattice, the recoil energy produces phonons and excites cooper pairs into Bogoliubov quasiparticles. The milli-electronvolt-scale bandgap of superconductors might enable a significantly lower nuclear recoil energy threshold. To sense the energy in the phonon and quasiparticle systems, a trapping and thermalisation layer is connected with transition edge sensors for ultra-sensitive heat to current conversion. Several detectors are envisaged to be frequency multiplexed into the microwave band using SQUIDs and resonators at cryogenic temperatures.

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