Current Status and Future Perspectives of the LUCIFER Experiment

Abstract

In the field of fundamental particle physics, the neutrino has become more and more important in the last few years, since the discovery of its mass. In particular, the ultimate nature of the neutrino (if it is a Dirac or a Majorana particle) plays a crucial role not only in neutrino physics, but also in the overall framework of fundamental particle interactions and in cosmology. The only way to disentangle its ultimate nature is to search for the neutrinoless double beta decay. The idea of LUCIFER is to combine the bolometric technique proposed for the CUORE experiment with the bolometric light detection technique used in cryogenic dark matter experiments. The bolometric technique allows an extremely good energy resolution while its combination with the scintillation detection offers an ultimate tool for background rejection. The goal of LUCIFER is not only to build a background-free small-scale experiment but also to directly prove the potentiality of this technique. Preliminary tests on several detectors containing different interesting DBD emitters have clearly demonstrated the excellent background rejection capabilities that arise from the simultaneous, independent, double readout of heat and scintillation light.

High sensitivity phonon-mediated kinetic inductance detector with combined amplitude and phase read-out

“…9 Thanks to the high sensitivity and to the multiplexed read-out, KIDs have been proposed in several physics sectors, such as photon detection, astronomy, [9][10][11] search for dark matter interactions, 12,13 and for the read-out of transition-edge sensors arrays. 14,15 KIDs show all the desirable features for an innovative light detector with the exception of a wide active surface: macro-bolometers used by experiments such as CUORE 16 and CUPID-0 17,18 are characterized by surfaces of several cm 2 , while typical KIDs sizes barely reach few mm 2 . This limit can be overcome by following the phonon mediated approach: 13,19 photons are coupled to the KIDs through a large insulating substrate, which converts them into phonons.…”

The LUCIFER Project: Achievements and Near Future Prospects

“…In order to read the thermal signal NTDs (Neutron Transmutation Doped Thermistor) based on germanium are attached to each crystal by means of epoxy resin droplets. More information on the characteristics of NTDs and their readout can be found in [19].…”

“…From a long background run of 524 h we calculate the following contamination in such natural ZnSe crystal by examining the α-spectrum: we find (17.2 ± 4.6) µBq/kg of 232 Th and (24.6 ± 5.5) µBq/kg of 238 U, both in equilibrium with their daughters [19]. For a demonstrator experiment in an almost zero-background framework the tolerable limits for contributions from 232 Th and 238 U decay chains, in the crystal, are at few tens of µBq/kg only.…”

Review of neutrinoless double beta decay experiments: Present status and near future

“…The envisioned sensitivity for a 100 kg detector after 5 yr of running will be m ββ <(0.02-0.06) eV [32]. Two scintillation bolometers, LUCIFER [33] and LU-MINEU [34,35], are under development and will search for ββ decays in 82 Se and 100 Mo by using ZnSe and ZnMoO 4 crystals, respectively. The MOON project aims at deploying multi-layer detector modules, each consisting of a ββ emitting film ( 82 Se or 100 Mo), a scintillator plate (e.g.…”