Abstract
We are developing athermal-phonon mediated particle detectors that utilize microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) as phonon sensors. MKIDs afford natural frequency domain multiplexing, which allows for massive substrates to be patterned with hundreds of sensors while keeping readout complexity to a minimum. Previously, our 2 cm \(\times \) 2 cm \(\times \) 1 mm proof-of-principle device utilized 20 MKIDs and, from the magnitude and timing of their response, we were able to reconstruct the position of a particle interaction to \(<\)1 mm. From this, we corrected for variations in detector response across the device and measured an energy resolution of \(\sigma _E = 0.55\) keV at 30 keV. We have designed and fabricated a new 3-inch prototype device that utilizes 256 MKID sensors, and we present results from its initial testing. Applications include rare event searches, such as the direct detection of dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay, as well as hard X-ray/soft \(\gamma \)-ray astrophysics.
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Acknowledgments
Our research was carried out primarily at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute for Technology, under contract from NASA. JPL’s Microdevices Laboratory fabricated the devices used in this work. We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Our work benefited greatly from the expertise of, as well as software developed by, the CDMS/SuperCDMS collaboration for the development of phonon-mediated particle detectors. We would also like to thank NASA’s Space Technology Research Fellowship program for its ongoing support.
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Cornell, B., Moore, D.C., Golwala, S.R. et al. Particle Detection Using MKID-Based Athermal-Phonon Mediated Detectors. J Low Temp Phys 176, 891–897 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-013-1039-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-013-1039-7