A Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events: Cuore, an Update

TL;DR

CUORE is an upcoming cryogenic detector array designed to search for rare events like neutrinoless double beta decay, dark matter, and solar axions, with preliminary experiments and simulations indicating promising sensitivity.

Contribution

This paper updates on CUORE's design, construction, and expected performance, highlighting its potential for rare event detection and recent experimental progress.

Findings

Preliminary results from the MIBETA experiment demonstrate detector capabilities.

Construction of a CUORE tower is underway as a scaled-down test.

Simulations suggest high sensitivity for rare event searches.

Abstract

CUORE is a proposed tightly packed array of 1000 TeO_{2} bolometers, each being a cube 5 cm on a side with a mass of 750 gms. The array consists of 25 vertical towers, arranged in a square, of 5 towers by 5 towers, each containing 10 layers of 4 crystals. The design of the detector is optimized for ultralow- background searches for neutrinoless double beta decay of ^{130}Te (33.8% abundance), cold dark matter, solar axions, and rare nuclear decays. A preliminary experiment involving 20 crystals of various sizes (MIBETA) has been completed, and a single CUORE tower is being constructed as a smaller scale experiment called CUORICINO. The expected performance and sensitivity, based on Monte Carlo simulations and extrapolations of present results, are reported.