Development of kinetic inductance detectors for CUORE and LUCIFER

The purpose of the CALDER project (Cryogenic wide-Area Light Detector with Excellent Resolution) is to develop new cryogenic light detectors to be used in CUORE and LUCIFER to improve the sensitivity in the search of neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) and dark matter. The sensitivity of CUORE can be increased by a factor of 3, thanks to the reduction of the α background, obtained by detecting the Cherenkov light (∼ 100 eV) emitted by βs events and not by the α-background. In LUCIFER the ability to discriminate β/γ events (∼ 100 eV of scintillation light) from nuclear recoils (no light) in the low-energy region opens the way to search for dark matter interactions. This detectors must have an active area of 25 cm2, a baseline energy resolution of ∼ 20 eV RMS and a working temperature of 10 mK. The technology chosen is based on the phonon-mediated kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs). This paper presents the results of the first prototypes tested.