“…Industrially produced grains using the atomization technique exhibited a smearing of δH/H ∼ 20%. By using planar arrays of regularly spaced superheated superconducting microstructures which were produced by various sputtering and evaporation techniques the transition smearing could be reduced to about 2% [88][89][90][91][92]. The improvement of the phase transition smearing is one of the most important developments for future applications of SSG detectors.…”
Most calorimeters used in high energy physics measure the energy loss of a particle in form of ionization (free charges) or scintillation light. However, a large fraction of the deposited energy in form of heat remains undetected. The energy resolution of these devices is therefore mainly driven by the statistical fluctuations of the number of charge carriers or photoelectrons involved in an event. In contrast, cryogenic calorimeters are able to measure the total deposited energy including the heat in form of phonons or quasi-particles in a superconductor. With the appropriate phonon or quasi-particle detection system much higher energy resolutions can be obtained due to the very large number of low energy quanta (meV) involved in the process. This feature makes cryogenic calorimeters very effective in the detection of very small energy deposits (eV) with resolutions more than an order of magnitude better than for example semiconductor devices. During the last two decades cryogenic detectors have been developed to explore new frontiers in physics and astrophysics. Among these are the quest for the dark matter in the universe, the neutrinoless double beta decay and the mass of the neutrino. But other fields of research have also benefited from these developments, such as astrophysics, material and life sciences. The calorimetric measurement of deposited energy in an absorber dates back to 1878, when the American astronomer S.P. Langley invented the bolometer [1]. With this device he was able to measure the energy flow of the sun in the far infrared region of the spectrum and to determine the solar constant. Since then the bolometer has played an important role to measure the energy of electromagnetic radiation
“…Industrially produced grains using the atomization technique exhibited a smearing of δH/H ∼ 20%. By using planar arrays of regularly spaced superheated superconducting microstructures which were produced by various sputtering and evaporation techniques the transition smearing could be reduced to about 2% [88][89][90][91][92]. The improvement of the phase transition smearing is one of the most important developments for future applications of SSG detectors.…”
Most calorimeters used in high energy physics measure the energy loss of a particle in form of ionization (free charges) or scintillation light. However, a large fraction of the deposited energy in form of heat remains undetected. The energy resolution of these devices is therefore mainly driven by the statistical fluctuations of the number of charge carriers or photoelectrons involved in an event. In contrast, cryogenic calorimeters are able to measure the total deposited energy including the heat in form of phonons or quasi-particles in a superconductor. With the appropriate phonon or quasi-particle detection system much higher energy resolutions can be obtained due to the very large number of low energy quanta (meV) involved in the process. This feature makes cryogenic calorimeters very effective in the detection of very small energy deposits (eV) with resolutions more than an order of magnitude better than for example semiconductor devices. During the last two decades cryogenic detectors have been developed to explore new frontiers in physics and astrophysics. Among these are the quest for the dark matter in the universe, the neutrinoless double beta decay and the mass of the neutrino. But other fields of research have also benefited from these developments, such as astrophysics, material and life sciences. The calorimetric measurement of deposited energy in an absorber dates back to 1878, when the American astronomer S.P. Langley invented the bolometer [1]. With this device he was able to measure the energy flow of the sun in the far infrared region of the spectrum and to determine the solar constant. Since then the bolometer has played an important role to measure the energy of electromagnetic radiation
“…However, the single granule experiments of the MPI group have shown [Fra90,Fra91] that an individual granule itself can already show a phase transition smearing between 10 and 30% (see section 4.2.2). An improvement of nearly an order of magnitude was obtained by using photolithographic techniques to produce an ordered array of superconducting dots by the University of British Columbia group [Leg90,Meg93] (see section 4.2.3).…”
Section: Phase Diagram Of Type I Superconducting Granulesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Much smaller tin granules with diameters of 4 µm and 16 µm were produced in a 250 × 250 square array and irradiated by the 24 and 65 keV X-rays of a 119m Sn source [Meg93]. For a given magnetic field H 0 the temperature was chosen such that the array of granules was in the lower half of the temperature transition curve (see figure 30).…”
Section: Planar Arrays Of Superheated Superconductorsmentioning
A review of cryogenic particle detectors is presented. A major motivation for developing this type of particle detector is their superior sensitivity to weakly ionizing particle interactions. This makes them suitable devices for detecting solar neutrinos via the coherent neutrino scattering off nuclei and for detecting non-baryonic dark matter candidates in our galactic halo. Cryogenic particle detectors have reached, and in some cases already surpassed, the high energy resolution of the best semiconducting detectors, and they have the potential of becoming the next generation of high-resolution detectors. The emphasis of this review is on the basic condensed matter physics of these low-temperature detectors and to present an overview of the present experimental status.
“…Our group fabricated a new SSG detector based on a planar array of superheated superconductors (PASS) produced by photolithography followed by melting in the presence of a wetting agent [4], and we have been investigating its potential for detecting dark matter, i.e., weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), neutrons, and neutrinos [5,6]. By appropriately adjusting the temperature T and applied magnetic field B 0 , the granules can be set in the superheated superconducting state very close to the line separating that phase with the normal one.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The flips and flops are read out as steps on the SQUID read-out and the actual magnitude of the signals depends on the particular experimental condition pertaining in the experiment (B 0 , geometry of pick-up coil, etc.). Normally, in the detecting mode [4][5][6], T and B 0 are set to be at the onset of the transition regime in which granules are beginning to flip (on increasing the temperature) from the superheated superconducting state to the normal state. For this experiment to test whether radiation can nucleate the superconductivity we set T and B 0 in the regime in which the granules flop (on decreasing T ) from the supercooled normal state to the superconducting state, and Fig.…”
We have observed that low energy g rays nucleate the supercooled normal to superconducting phase transition in micron-sized indium spheres. The mechanism for the nucleation in the superconducting sphere may have similarities to some aspects of the "baked Alaska" model proposed by Leggett for liquid 3 He in which cosmic rays nucleate the transition from the supercooled superfluid A phase to the B phase. [S0031-9007(97)
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