First Demonstration of the HeRALD Superfluid Helium Detector Concept

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel superfluid helium detector with a new film-blocking method, achieving a low energy threshold suitable for detecting sub-GeV dark matter particles.

Contribution

It introduces the HeRALD detector concept with a heat-free Cs film-blocking technique and reports initial measurements of its atomic and quasiparticle signals.

Findings

Quantum evaporation channel gain measured at 0.15 ± 0.01

Energy threshold of 145 eV at 5 sigma achieved

Detector sensitivity extends to dark matter masses down to 220 MeV/c²

Abstract

The SPICE/HeRALD collaboration is performing R&D to enable studies of sub-GeV dark matter models using a variety of target materials. Here we report our recent progress on instrumenting a superfluid $^4$He target mass with a transition-edge sensor based calorimeter to detect both atomic signals (scintillation) and $^4$He quasiparticle (phonon and roton) excitations. The sensitivity of HeRALD to the critical "quantum evaporation" signal from $^4$He quasiparticles requires us to block the superfluid film flow to the calorimeter. We have developed a heat-free film-blocking method employing an unoxidized Cs film, which we implemented in a prototype "HeRALD v0.1" detector of ~10 g target mass. This article reports initial studies of the atomic and quasiparticle signal channels. A key result of this work is the measurement of the quantum evaporation channel's gain of 0.15 $\pm$ 0.01, which will enable $^4$He-based dark matter experiments in the near term. With this gain the HeRALD detector reported here has an energy threshold of 145 eV at 5 sigma, which would be sensitive to dark matter masses down to 220 MeV/c$^2$.