发表机构
IP2I-Lyon, Univ. Lyon, Université Lyon 1, CNRS/IN2P3; IJCLab, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS/IN2P3; Department of Physics, University of Zurich; LPSC-IN2P3, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP; Argonne National Laboratory; Department of Physics, University of California Berkeley; Amherst Center for Fundamental Interactions and Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（里昂第一大学国家科学研究中心/法国原子能和替代能源委员会第二粒子物理研究所; 巴黎萨克雷大学国家科学研究中心/法国原子能和替代能源委员会第二粒子物理研究所; 苏黎世大学物理系; 格勒诺布尔阿尔卑斯大学国家科学研究中心/法国原子能和替代能源委员会第二粒子物理研究所格勒诺布尔国立理工学院; 阿贡国家实验室; 加州大学伯克利分校物理系; 马萨诸塞大学基础相互作用中心及物理系; 劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）
机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。AI 中文总结
本文提出一种低温高纯锗探测器，通过量热测量实现单电子-空穴对灵敏度，抑制低能背景，为暗物质搜索和中微子探测开辟新途径。
AI 中文摘要
高纯锗探测器是伽马射线光谱测量中最强大的仪器之一，兼具卓越的能量分辨率和大的有源体积。尽管在高能段其性能接近基本分辨率极限，但在极低能段，其性能长期以来受电子噪声限制，导致探测阈值高于约30个电子-空穴对（约100 eV）。本文介绍了一种低温高纯锗探测器架构，通过在接近20 mK的温度下对电离进行量热测量，实现了单电子-空穴对灵敏度。该器件将NbSi过渡边缘传感器集成到类点接触几何结构中，集中电荷漂移过程中产生的非热声子能量，从而实现最终由半导体带隙决定的电子伏特级灵敏度。除单电荷探测外，该器件还能抑制限制现有低温低阈值技术的低能过量背景，为在100 eV以下区分电子和核反冲事件开辟了途径。这些进展为下一代探测器铺平了道路，可应用于直接暗物质搜索、相干弹性中微子-核散射以及用于防扩散的核反应堆监测。
英文摘要
High-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors are among the most powerful instruments for gamma ray spectroscopy, combining exceptional energy resolution with large active volumes. Although they operate close to the fundamental resolution limit at high energies, their performance at very low energies has long been limited by electronic noise, restricting detection thresholds to above approximately 30 electron-hole pairs ($\sim$100 eV). Here we introduce a cryogenic HPGe detector architecture that achieves single electron-hole pair sensitivity by calorimetrically measuring ionization at temperatures near 20 mK. The device integrates a NbSi transition-edge sensor into a point-contact-inspired geometry, concentrating athermal phonon energy generated during charge drift and enabling eV-scale sensitivity ultimately set by the semiconductor band gap. Beyond single-charge detection, the device rejects the low-energy excess background that limits existing cryogenic low-threshold technologies, establishing a pathway towards discrimination between electron- and nuclear-recoil events below 100 eV. These advances open a route towards next-generation detectors for direct dark matter searches, coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, and nuclear reactor monitoring for non-proliferation applications.
CommentsSubmitted to Physical Review X
