Germanium target sensed by phonon-mediated kinetic inductance detectors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the design and operation of germanium-based phonon sensors using Kinetic Inductance Detectors, aiming to enhance neutrino and dark matter detection capabilities with scalable, multi-target detectors.

Contribution

It introduces a germanium absorber coupled with KIDs, showing comparable phonon-sensing performance to silicon, and provides a proof of concept for scalable neutrino and dark matter detectors.

Findings

Germanium KID-based phonon sensors achieve performance comparable to silicon.

Successful design, fabrication, and operation of germanium KID detectors.

Proof of concept for scalable multi-target neutrino and dark matter detectors.

Abstract

Cryogenic phonon detectors are adopted in experiments searching for dark matter interactions or coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, thanks to the low energy threshold they can achieve. The phonon-mediated sensing of particle interactions in passive silicon absorbers has been demonstrated with Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs). Targets with neutron number larger than silicon, however, feature higher cross section to neutrinos while multi-target absorbers in dark matter experiments would provide a stronger evidence of a possible signal. In this work we present the design, fabrication and operation of KIDs coupled to a germanium absorber, achieving phonon-sensing performance comparable to silicon absorbers. The device introduced in this work is a proof of concept for a scalable neutrino detector and for a multi-target dark matter experiment.