Measurements and simulations of athermal phonon transmission from silicon absorbers to aluminium sensors

TL;DR

This study combines measurements and simulations to better understand athermal phonon transmission at silicon-aluminium interfaces, validating the acoustic mismatch model and providing specific transmission coefficients relevant for cryogenic detectors.

Contribution

It introduces a Monte Carlo simulation validated against experimental data to analyze phonon transmission, favoring the acoustic mismatch model over diffuse reflection.

Findings

Good agreement with AMM model for phonon transmission

Transmission coefficients for Si-Al in the range [0.3-0.55]

Transmission coefficients for Si-Teflon in the range [0.1-0.15]

Abstract

Phonon reflection and transmission at the interfaces plays a fundamental role in cryogenic particle detectors, in which the optimization of the phonon signal at the sensor (in case of phonon-mediated detectors) or the minimization of the heat transmission (when the detection occurs in the sensor itself) is of primary importance to improve sensitivity. Nevertheless, the mechanisms governing the phonon physics at the interfaces are still not completely understood. The two more successful models, the acoustic mismatch model (AMM) and diffuse mismatch model (DMM) are not able to explain all the accumulated experimental data and the measurement of the transmission coefficients between the materials remains a challenge. Here, we use measurements of the athermal phonon flux in aluminium Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KID) deposited on silicon substrates following a particle interaction to validate a Monte Carlo (MC) phonon simulation. We apply the Mattis-Bardeen theory to derive the phonon pulse energy and timing from the KID signal and compare the results with the MC for both AMM and DMM models, finding a remarkable good agreement for AMM, while diffuse reflection is clearly disfavored. For an aluminum film of 60 nm and a silicon substrate of 380~$\mu$m, we obtain transmission coefficients Si-Al in the range [0.3-0.55] and Si-Teflon in the range [0.1-0.15].