A new data milestone for the CUORE experiment in Italy

The HEART detector array, shown here in this rendering, consists of 19 copper-framed “towers” that each house a matrix of 52 cube-shaped crystals. (Credit: HEART Collaboration)

Surrounded by lead and also shielded by nearly a mile of rock from the natural bombardment of particles on the Earth’s surface, the CUORE experiment has amassed the largest data set so far for a project of its kind, which uses solid crystals to detect a theorized event. which would answer a big question about how matter won over antimatter in our universe. It would also tell us whether the spectral particles called neutrinos, which pass through most matter without interruption, are essentially their own antiparticles.

Data collected by CUORE, the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events, now represents more than one “ton-year” of data (equivalent to one year of data if crystals weighed a ton) collected from a solid state (crystal vs. liquid or gas) for an experiment of its kind, based on the weight of its detector’s crystals. CUORE has an array of 988 crystal detectors. Its crystals each weigh around 1.6 pounds and in total weigh around 0.8 tons.

Located at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Gran Sasso National Laboratories, or LNGS, managed by the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics, INFN) in central Italy, CUORE has reached a milestone in exceeding the data collected for experiments by about 10 times comparables, said Yury Kolomensky, a US spokesperson for the CUORE collaboration and senior scientist at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

The experiment is designed to detect a theorized and never before seen nuclear decay process known as neutrino-free double beta decay, which occurs in atoms of tellurium-130, a radioactive isotope in detector crystals. An isotope is a form of an element with more or fewer neutrons (discharged particles) in its core than the standard.

CUORE has been conducting its ultra-sensitive research continuously since March 19. It works near absolute zero, the coldest temperature in the known universe. The CUORE collaboration plans to run the experiment for another few years, then upgrade it to CUPID, a new, even more sensitive detector. Berkeley Lab will lead US participation in the international CUPID project.

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