Developments of Microresonators Detectors for Neutrino Physics in Milan

Superconducting microwave microresonators are low temperature detectors which are compatible with large-scale multiplexed frequency domain readout. We aim to adapt and further advance the technology of microresonator detectors to develop new devices applied to the problem of measuring the neutrino mass. More specifically, we aim to develop detector arrays for calorimetric measurement of the energy spectra of 163Ho EC decay (Q ∼ 2-3 keV) for a direct measurement of the neutrino mass. In order to achieve these goal, we need to find the best design and materials for the detectors. A recent advance in microwave microresonator technology was the discovery that some metal nitrides, such as TiN, possess properties consistent with very high detector sensitivity.We plan to investigate nitrides of higher-Z materials, for example TaN and HfN, that are appropriate for containing the energy of keV decay events, exploring the properties relevant to our detectors, such as quality factor, penetration depth and recombination time. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012.