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The TORIO-229 experiment aims for a direct model-independent determination of the transition energy of $$^\mathrm {229m}$$ 229 m Th produced in $$^\mathrm {233}$$ 233 U alpha decay. This knowledge will be of interest for the development of a scientific clock exploiting the thorium isomeric state, which would be able to significantly surpass the precision of the presently best clocks. As a detector for the isomeric transition, it is planned to use an array of fast transition-edge sensors (TESs) which demonstrated to be feasible in our previous work where the Ir/Au TES prototype demonstrated $$4.6\pm 1.7$$ 4.6 ± 1.7 µs rise time, $$5.8\pm 2.1$$ 5.8 ± 2.1 µs fall time and $$0.789\pm 0.023$$ 0.789 ± 0.023 eV energy resolution and signal-to-noise ratio of $$\sim$$ ∼ 10 with one-photon (2.824 eV) signal, satisfying the experimental requirements. Such a microcalorimeter will allow to register the transition in every possible channel in the energy range from 3 to 50 eV and with a lifetime of > 5 µs. To have a full characterization of a single TES for the final detector array design, its thermal conductance has to be measured. In this contribution, we report on a test measurement of thermal coupling of a TORIO-229 prototype-like iridium-gold TES.

The X-IFU is the cryogenic spectrometer onboard the future ATHENA X-ray observatory. It is based on a large array of TES microcalorimeters, which works in combination with a Cryogenic AntiCoincidence detector (CryoAC). This is necessary to reduce the particle background level thus enabling part of the mission science goals. Here we present the first joint test of X-IFU TES array and CryoAC Demonstration Models, performed in a FDM setup. We show that it is possible to operate properly both detectors, and we provide a preliminary demonstration of the anti-coincidence capability of the system achieved by the simultaneous detection of cosmic muons., Accepted for publication in the Journal of Low Temperature Physics for LTD-19 special issue

The HOLMES experiment aims to directly measure the ν mass studying the 163Ho electron capture decay spectrum developing arrays of TES-based microcalorimeters implanted with O(300 Bq/detector) Ho atoms. The embedding of the source inside detectors is a crucial step of the experiment. Because the 163Ho production process (neutron irradiation of a 162Er sample) is not perfectly free from impurities, Ho source must be separated from a lot of contaminants. A chemical processing removes every species other than Ho, but it is not sufficient to remove all isotope-related background sources: Indeed, 166mHo beta decay can produce fake signal in the region of interest. For this reason, a dedicated implantation system was set up. It is designed to achieve the separation power better than 5σ at 163/166 a.m.u. allowing an efficient Ho ions implantation inside microcalorimeter absorbers. Its main components are a 50 kV sputter-based ion source, a magnetic dipole and a target chamber. A specially designed co-evaporation system was designed to “grow” the gold microcalorimeter absorber during the implantation process, increasing the maximum achievable activity which can be implanted. The machine performances were evaluated by means of calibration runs using 63Cu/65Cu and Mo beams. A special care was given to the study of the more effective way to populate source plasma with Ho ions obtained from different Ho compounds by sputtering process. In this work, the machine development and commissioning are described.

31 pags., 7 figs., The PTOLEMY project aims to develop a scalable design for a Cosmic Neutrino Background (CNB) detector, the first of its kind and the only one conceived that can look directly at the image of the Universe encoded in neutrino background produced in the first second after the Big Bang. The scope of the work for the next three years is to complete the conceptual design of this detector and to validate with direct measurements that the non-neutrino backgrounds are below the expected cosmological signal. In this paper we discuss in details the theoretical aspects of the experiment and its physics goals. In particular, we mainly address three issues. First we discuss the sensitivity of PTOLEMY to the standard neutrino mass scale. We then study the perspectives of the experiment to detect the CNB via neutrino capture on tritium as a function of the neutrino mass scale and the energy resolution of the apparatus. Finally, we consider an extra sterile neutrino with mass in the eV range, coupled to the active states via oscillations, which has been advocated in view of neutrino oscillation anomalies. This extra state would contribute to the tritium decay spectrum, and its properties, mass and mixing angle, could be studied by analyzing the features in the beta decay electron spectrum., Work supported by the Italian grant 2017W4HA7S “NAT-NET: Neutrino and Astroparticle Theory Network” (PRIN 2017) funded by the Italian Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (MIUR); by the Spanish grants ENE2016-76755-R, SEV-2014-0398 and FPA2017- 85216-P (AEI/FEDER, UE), PROMETEO/2018/165 (Generalitat Valenciana), María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence CIEMAT - Particle Physics (MDM-2015-0509) and the Red Consolider MultiDark FPA2017-90566-REDC; by the Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council) through contract No. 638-2013-8993; by the Simons Foundation, USA (#377485) and John Templeton Foundation, USA (#58851); and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual Grant Agreement No. 796941.

The assessment of neutrino absolute mass scale is still a crucial challenge in today particle physics and cosmology. Beta or electron capture spectrum end-point study is currently the only experimental method which can provide a model independent measurement of the absolute scale of neutrino mass. HOLMES is an experiment funded by the European Research Council to directly measure the neutrino mass. HOLMES will perform a calorimetric measurement of the energy released in the electron capture decay of the artificial isotope $^{163}$Ho. In a calorimetric measurement the energy released in the decay process is entirely contained into the detector, except for the fraction taken away by the neutrino. This approach eliminates both the issues related to the use of an external source and the systematic uncertainties arising from decays on excited final states. The most suitable detectors for this type of measurement are low temperature thermal detectors, where all the energy released into an absorber is converted into a temperature increase that can be measured by a sensitive thermometer directly coupled with the absorber. This measurement was originally proposed in 1982 by A. De Rujula and M. Lusignoli, but only in the last decade the technological progress in detectors development has allowed to design a sensitive experiment. HOLMES plans to deploy a large array of low temperature microcalorimeters with implanted $^{163}$Ho nuclei. In this contribution we outline the HOLMES project with its physics reach and technical challenges, along with its status and perspectives., This is a pre-print of an article published in Journal of Low Temperature Physics. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-018-2025-x

We present the particle background reduction techniques aimed to increase the X-IFU sensitivity, which is reduced by primary protons of both solar and Cosmic Rays origin, and secondary electrons. The adopted solutions involve Monte Carlo simulation by both Geant4 toolkit related to the "expected" background at L2 orbit through the payload mass model and the ray tracing technique to evaluate the soft protons components focused by the optics to the main detector, and the development of an active Cryogenic AntiCoincidence detector and a passive electron shielding to meet the scientific requirements.