Metallic magnetic calorimeters (MMCs) are highly sensitive temperature sensors that use the paramagnetic nature of erbium in a metallic host and superconducting electronics usually composed of a superconducting niobium coil and a current sensing superconducting quantum interference device. This article discusses the applicability of MMCs in experimental searches for rare events in particle physics. A detector module using two MMCs was built to perform low-temperature measurements of heat and scintillation light generated by particle interaction in a 340 g 40Ca100MoO4 crystal. The energy transfer mechanism, from incident particles to the components of the heat and light sensors, is described through a thermal model. MMCs, with gold films collecting athermal phonons, can be used over wide ranges of operating temperature and crystal volume without a significant change in detector performances. Rare event searches could thus benefit from MMC-based detectors presenting such flexibility as well as excellent energy resolution and particle discrimination power.
Metallic magnetic calorimeters (MMCs) are highly sensitive temperature sensors that operate at millikelvin temperatures. An energy deposit in a detector can be measured using an MMC through the induced temperature increase. The MMC signal, i.e., a variation in magnetization can then be measured using a superconducting quantum interference device. MMCs are used in particle physics experiments searching for rare processes as their high sensitivity and fast response provide high energy and timing resolutions and good particle discrimination. Low-temperature detectors consisting of molybdenum-based scintillating crystals read out via MMCs were designed and built to perform simultaneous measurements of heat and light signals at millikelvin temperatures. These detectors have been used in the advanced Mo-based rare process experiment (AMoRE) that searches for the neutrinoless double beta decay of 100Mo. This article provides a detailed description of the MMC-based low-temperature detector system of the AMoRE-Pilot experiment which currently uses five crystals.
We report on a systematic study for maximising the signal size of metallic magnetic calorimeters (MMCs) used for large-area light detectors operating at milli-Kelvin temperatures. These light detectors are to be used for phonon-scintillation detection using a scintillating crystal for rare event search experiments. The light detector is composed of a 2 inch wafer as an absorber for scintillation light from a crystal, and an MMC as its sensor. A systematic calculation for the expected signal size is made with different SQUID selections, Er concentrations of an MMC sensor, dimensions of the meander-shaped pick-up coil, field currents and operating temperatures. The optimisation study finds that more than five times larger signals can be achieved compared with that of a reference condition in which 90 eV root-mean-squared threshold is obtained. We also describe the inductance measurement for several MMC devices with different size of the pick-up coil to be applied for an optimal condition. This optimisation protocol is also valid for MMC applications of x-ray, alpha and beta spectroscopies.
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