Physics potential and prospects for the CUORICINO and CUORE experiments

Abstract

The CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) experiment projects to construct and operate an array of 1000 cryogenic thermal detectors of Preprint submitted to Elsevier Science TeO 2 , of a mass of 760 g each, to investigate rare events physics, in particular, double beta decay and non baryonic particle dark matter. A first step towards CUORE is CUORICINO, an array of 62 of bolometers, currently being installed in the Gran Sasso Laboratory. In this paper we report the physics potential of both stages of the experiment regarding neutrinoless double beta decay of 130 Te, WIMP searches and solar axions.

Prospects for CUORE and Latest Results from CUORICINO

“…Details about the TeO 2 cryogenic detector are contained in a NIM A paper 1 and the physics potential of CUORE is described in a recent article in Astroparticle Physics. 2 A complete description of the CUORE project is also available online. 3 The estimated sensitivity of CUORE illustrated in Figure 2 is sufficient to cover essentially all of the so-called inverted mass hierarchy region deduced from ν oscillation experiments.…”

Searching for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay of130Te with CUORE

“…After being built, the tower was enclosed in a copper thermal shield and installed in the former Cuoricino cryostat. CUORE-0 therefore shares much of the same infrastructure used in Cuoricino, such as the external shielding, the Faraday cage, and the data acquisition (DAQ) hardware [36]. A Plexiglas shield surrounding the cryostat is continuously flushed with nitrogen gas to prevent ingress of radon.…”

The temperature stabilization system of CUORICINO: an array of macro bolometers

“…The thermistor is constructed in order to have high sensitivity. We use Ge NTD thermistors in our experiments, that are well modeled by the function [10], [11]: (1) Our devices have of the order of a few and of about 3 K. Using these two values in (1), the thermistor operating points are found around 100 for temperatures between 5 mK and 10 mK. A very simplified thermal model of a bolometric detector is shown in Fig.…”

“…(2) 1 Simulink is a trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. where equals 2.4 [12] and P(T) is the dissipated power. The background power can rarely be neglected in these applications.…”

“…CUORICINO [1] is an array composed of 62 bolometric crystals, featuring 42 kg of total mass. Its aim is to study the Double beta decay, , of .…”