Scintillating bolometers: a powerful instrument for low background experiments

Thanks to their intrinsic characteristics, bolometers are suitable detectors for fundamental physics experiments, like neutrinoless Double Beta Decay and Dark Matter searches, and for radioactivity measurements. In particular great attention to such applications has been motivated by the usage of bolometers with combined read out: heat plus scintillation, heat plus ionization. In the case of heat plus scintillation we can combine the very high energy resolution of a bolometer with the very good particle discrimination capabilities of a scintillating detector. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.