Low Temperature Detectors for Neutrino Physics

CUPID (CUORE Upgrade with Particle Identification) is the upgrade of the CUORE experiment. CUPID is a leading next generation of rare event experiments. Designed to search and investigate the 100Mo double beta decay aims at reducing CUORE radioactive background by 2 order of magnitudes. It will enable the exploration of the inverted hierarchy of the neutrino masses and to access rare processes with probabilities as low as 10^-27 y^-1.

To reduce the radioactive backround CUPID exploits the possibility to identify the particle interacting in the detector's crystals by simultaneously detecting the total energy deposition - as thermal signal - and the scintillation light - as thermal signal in a secondary optically coupled detector. By this mean the double decay signal given by electrons is separated from the main background signal due to alha particle interactions - as in CUORE.

Several R&D activities for the CUPID experiment are carried out in Cryogenic Laboratory. They aim at the understanding and optimization of massive low temperature detectors for rare event spectroscopy.

• dedicated set-up are designed and operated aimed at studying predictive models for the detector signal formation and development;
• various technologies are explored to increase the scintillation light detecor sensitivity and improve the particle discrimination, e.g. by leveraging the Luke effect in Sillicon;
• innovative detector holder designs and materials are investigated to minimize the contribution of passive detector components to the radioactive background;
• new algorithms for particle type recognition and pile-up discrimination are developed and tested.