Estimating the energy threshold of phonon-mediated superconducting qubit detectors operated in an energy-relaxation sensing scheme

• DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.111.063047
• Publication Date: 2025-03-18T15:00:25Z
• Authors: R. Linehan; I. Hernandez; D. J. Temples; S. Q. Dang; D. Baxter; L. Hsu; E. Figueroa-Felic...; R. Khatiwada; K. Anyang; D. Bowring; G. Bratrud; G. Cancelo; A. Chou; R. Gualtieri; K. Stifter; S. Sussman
• Keywords: Cooper pair

In recent years, the lack of a conclusive detection WIMP dark matter at 10 GeV/c$^{2}$ mass scale and above has encouraged development low-threshold detector technology aimed probing lighter candidates. Detectors based on Cooper-pair-breaking sensors have emerged as promising avenue for this due to low (meV-scale) energy required breaking Cooper pair in most superconductors. Among them, devices superconducting qubits are interesting candidates sensing their observed sensitivity broken pairs. We developed an end-to-end G4CMP-based simulation framework used it evaluate performance metrics qubit-based operating gate-based "energy relaxation" readout scheme, akin those studies qubit ionizing radiation. find that acts phonon sensor with threshold ranging down $\simeq$0.4 eV near-term parameters.