Particle discrimination in a NaI crystal using the COSINUS remote TES design

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2307.11066
• Publication Date: 2024-04-29
• Authors: COSINUS Collabora...; Angloher, G.; Bharadwaj, M. R.; Dafinei, I.; Di Marco, N.; Einfalt, L.; Ferroni, F.; Fichtinger, S.; Filipponi, A.; Frank, T.; Friedl, M.; Fuss, A.; Ge, Z.; Heikinheimo, M.; Hughes, M. N.; Huitu, K.; Kellermann, M.; Maji, R.; Mancuso, M.; Pagnanini, L.; Petricca, F.; Pirro, S.; Pröbst, F.; Profeta, G.; Puiu, A.; Reindl, F.; Schäffner, K.; Schieck, J.; Schmiedmayer, D.; Schwertner, C.; Stahlberg, M.; Stendhal, A.; Stukel, M.; Tresca, C.; Wagner, F.; Yue, S.; Zema, V.; Zhu, Y.; Bento, A.; Canonica, L.; Garai, A.
• Keywords: Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors; Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); Rare-event-search; FOS: Physical sciences; Dark-matter; Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det); 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences; Dark Matter; Demand Assignment Multiple Access; Germanium; 0103 physical sciences; TES; Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

The COSINUS direct dark matter experiment situated at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy is set to investigate the nature of the annually modulating signal detected by the DAMA/LIBRA experiment. COSINUS has already demonstrated that sodium iodide crystals can be operated at mK temperature as cryogenic scintillating calorimeters using transition edge sensors, despite the complication of handling a hygroscopic and low melting point material. With results from a new COSINUS prototype, we show that particle discrimination on an event-by-event basis in NaI is feasible using the dual-channel readout of both phonons and scintillation light. The detector was mounted in the novel remoTES design and operated in an above-ground facility for 9.06 g·d of exposure. With a 3.7 g NaI crystal, e−/γ events could be clearly distinguished from nuclear recoils down to the nuclear recoil energy threshold of 20 keV. Published by the American Physical Society 2024