Position and energy-resolved particle detection using phonon-mediated microwave kinetic inductance detectors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel phonon-mediated detection method using microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) that achieves high spatial and energy resolution in silicon, enabling advanced particle detection for rare-event physics.

Contribution

The work introduces position and energy-resolved particle detection with MKIDs, achieving sub-millimeter spatial resolution and sub-keV energy resolution, suitable for large-scale rare-event detectors.

Findings

Position resolution < 1 mm at 30 keV

Energy resolution .55 keV at 30 keV

Potential for scalable, highly-pixelized detectors

Abstract

We demonstrate position and energy-resolved phonon-mediated detection of particle interactions in a silicon substrate instrumented with an array of microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs). The relative magnitude and delay of the signal received in each sensor allows the location of the interaction to be determined with < 1 mm precision at 30 keV. Using this position information, variations in the detector response with position can be removed, and an energy resolution of \sigma_E = 0.55 keV at 30 keV was measured. Since MKIDs can be fabricated from a single deposited film and are naturally multiplexed in the frequency domain, this technology can be extended to provide highly-pixelized athermal phonon sensors for ~1 kg scale detector elements. Such high-resolution, massive particle detectors would be applicable to next-generation rare-event searches such as the direct detection of dark matter, neutrinoless double-beta decay, or coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering.