Karlsruhe 2011 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 73: Detektorsysteme III

T 73.5: Talk

Friday, April 1, 2011, 15:15–15:30, 30.36: 011

Low temperature metallic magnetic calorimeters for atomic and particle physics — Loredana Gastaldo, •Philipp Ranitzsch, Christian Pies, Jan-Patrick Porst, Sönke Schäfer, Sebastian Kempf, Sebastian Heuser, Sarah Vick, Alexandra Kampkötter, Andreas Fleischmann, and Christian Enss — Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University, INF 227 69120 Heidelberg

Low temperature Metallic Magnetic Calorimeters (MMCs) are energy dispersive detectors working at temperature below 100 mK. The energy released by the interaction of a particle in a suitable absorber induces an increase of temperature in the detector. The change of temperature is measured as a change of magnetization of a paramagnetic sensor positioned in a weak magnetic field and is tightly connected to the absorber and weakly to the thermal bath. The signal is read out by a low noise high bandwidth two stage SQUID system. The knowledge of the thermodynamical properties, which allows for numerical optimization, and the possibility of fully micro-fabricate these detectors offer a large flexibility for the detector design. Presently MMCs are developed for a wide range of applications including x-ray spectroscopy of highly charged ions, direct neutrino mass measurements by beta spectroscopy, x-ray cameras for astronomy, calibration of radiation standards in metrology and spatially resolved detection of molecular fragments. We present an introduction to the physics of MMCs and discuss design considerations and micro-fabrication processes of current devices and their experimental performance.