Erlangen 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 105: Methods in Astroparticle Physics V

T 105.2: Vortrag

Freitag, 20. März 2026, 09:15–09:30, KS 00.004

A high-precision nuclear recoil calibration facility at the TU Wien TRIGA reactor — •Andreas Erhart — Technische Universität München, München, Deutschland

Cryogenic calorimeters are a key technology for experiments aiming to measure coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering at the low-energy frontier or to directly search for sub-GeV dark matter particles. A detailed understanding of the detector response at the 100 eV scale is hereby indispensable. The CRAB collaboration has developed a novel, direct and model-independent calibration method based on nuclear recoils induced by the radiative capture of thermal neutrons. Following a successful feasibility study at TU München, where CRAB achieved the first observation of a monoenergetic peak at 112.5 eV from ¹⁸²W recoils and the observation of two ²⁷Al nuclear recoil peaks at 575 eV and 1145 eV, respectively, the project now enters its high-precision phase.

For this purpose, a dedicated calibration facility has been established at the TU Wien TRIGA reactor, providing a pure, low-intensity thermal neutron beam to the target detectors mounted inside a wet dilution refrigerator. Stable cryostat operation on a month-scale and excellent detector energy resolution below 5 eV have since been demonstrated. These results enable high-statistics calibration measurements of various detector materials such as CaWO₄, Al₂O₃, germanium and silicon in the near future, and open the prospect of an extensive associated physics program.

Keywords: Cryogenic calorimeters; Low-energy calibration; Nuclear recoils; Cryogenics; Thermal neutrons