Speaker
Description
The Direct Search Experiment for Light Dark Matter with Superfluid Helium (DELight) aims to search for Light Dark Matter (LDM) in the in the sub-GeV/c2 mass range. By employing superfluid helium as target material, three independent and distinguishable signal channels are provided. Measuring these signal channels with the required energy and time resolution, as well as with high efficiency demands a carefully designed and innovative detector concept.
DELight will employ a superfluid helium cell with a volume initially ranging from one liter to several hundred liters in future phases. To maximize the detection efficiency, while simultaneously minimizing the number of detector channels, the entire inner surface of the cell will be covered with large-area cryogenic microcalorimeters (LAMCALs) based on magnetic microcalorimeter (MMC) technology. These detectors will provide an excellent energy and time resolution, as well as close-to-ideal linear detector response. They operate in athermal mode, i.e., superconducting phonon collectors are used to transfer the energy of athermal phonons generated by energy deposition in the absorber to the electron system. The energy transfer occurs by athermal phonons breaking Cooper pairs in the collectors, producing quasiparticles (i.e., electrons), which propagate towards the paramagnetic temperature sensor. The resulting temperature rise leads to a change of sensor magnetization that provides a measure for the energy deposition and can be precisely measured using a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID).
This contribution presents initial concepts and first results of the development of such LAMCALs, highlighting both the advantages as well as the challenges associated with its implementation.
| Main Contribution topic | Instrumentation for Dark Matter searches |
|---|---|
| Secondary contribution topic | Direct detection |