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CUTE: A Low Background Facility for Testing Cryogenic Dark Matter Detectors

Journal of Low Temperature Physics volume 193, pages 813–818 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

The Cryogenic Underground Test (CUTE) facility will be located 2 km underground in the SNOLAB laboratory, near Sudbury (Ontario, Canada). It is primarily designed to test the performances of cryogenic detectors of the Super-Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment which will be installed next to CUTE. As a facility, it will also be accessible to scientists developing innovative cryogenic detectors for rare events search like dark matter or double-beta decay. The low temperature required to operate the cryogenic detectors is reached via an advanced dry dilution refrigerator from CryoConcept (France). The ‘Ultra Quiet Technique’ (UQT®) reduces the vibration transmission by using a proprietary gas-coupled thermal link between the two-stage pulse tube and the cryostat. In order to install the cryostat into a shielding water tank, we have developed a suspension system which decouples the cryostat from the environment with a low stiffness support, making a mechanical low-pass filter with a roll-off below 2 Hz for the vertical attenuation. We report the design choices made for the mechanical architecture to limit the vibration transmission and the material selection to achieve a low radioactive background rate in the detector. The expected background rate is less than 5 counts/day per kg of Ge detector in the 0–1 keV energy range.

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Acknowledgements

The CUTE project is funded through Prof. Gilles Gerbier’s Canada Excellence Research chair in Astroparticle Physics at Queen’s University; the authors acknowledge Emiliano Olivieri and Maurice Chapellier (CSNSM), Maryvonne DeJesus (IPNL), Ph. Bonnet and Jerome Lecomte (CryoConcept) for various fruitful discussions on the design choices.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Ph. Camus, K. Dering, G. Gerbier, W. Rau & X. Zhang

  2. IPNL, Domaine de la Doua, 59622, Villeurbanne Cedex, France

    A. Cazes

  3. LSM, Carre des Sciences, 73500, Modane, France

    A. Dastgheibi-Fard

  4. SNOLAB, Creighton Mine #9, Lively, ON, P3Y 1N2, Canada

    S. Scorza

Authors
  1. Ph. Camus
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  2. A. Cazes
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  3. A. Dastgheibi-Fard
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  4. K. Dering
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  5. G. Gerbier
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  6. W. Rau
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  7. S. Scorza
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  8. X. Zhang
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Correspondence to Ph. Camus.

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Camus, P., Cazes, A., Dastgheibi-Fard, A. et al. CUTE: A Low Background Facility for Testing Cryogenic Dark Matter Detectors. J Low Temp Phys 193, 813–818 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-018-2014-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-018-2014-0

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