CUORE: The Challenge of a 988 Bolometer Array

The design of CUORE (an array of 988 TeO2 bolometers working at ∼10 mK) was based on the information acquired with a 40.7 kg prototype, named Cuoricino, that allowed to obtain the present best limit on the half-life of 0νDBD of 130Te. In addition to providing important information on the different sources of spurious counts that limit the sensitivity for rare event experiments, Cuoricino allowed to study in detail the underground operation of a large array of bolometers (detector stability, noise sources and their reduction, off-line amplitude correction, . . . ). Moreover, additional CUORE R&D tests, carried out after Cuoricino, have already brought considerable improvements on the detector such as a lower acquisition threshold, with the consequent possibility to study additional physics such as Dark Matter, a standardization of the assembly and a special wiring to reduce the microphonic noise. The results thus obtained allow to assert that CUORE will be the largest mass cryogenic experiment put into operation, with an excellent sensitivity for the study of rare events thanks to an expected extremely low radioactive background level of 0.01 counts/keV/kg/yr in the 0νDBD region. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012.