Arrays of superconducting wires have been used for the first time to detect beams of high-energy charged particles. Much thinner wires are already used to detect single photons, but this latest incarnation uses thicker wires that can absorb the large amounts of energy carried by fast-moving protons, electrons, and pions. The new detector was created by an international team led by Cristián Peña at Fermilab.
In a single-photon detector, an array of superconducting nanowires is operated below the critical temperature for superconductivity – with current flowing freely through the nanowires. When a nanowire absorbs a photon it creates a hotspot that temporarily destroys superconductivity and boosts the electrical resistance. This creates a voltage spike across the nanowire, allowing the location and time of the photon detection to be determined very precisely.
“These detectors have emerged as the most advanced time-resolved single-photon sensors in a wide range of wavelengths,” Peña explains. “Applications of these photon detectors include quantum networking and computing, space-to-ground communication, exoplanet exploration and fundamental probes for new physics such as dark matter.”
A similar hotspot is created when a superconducting wire is impacted by a high-energy charged particle. In principle, this could be used to create particle detectors that could be used in experiments at labs such as Fermilab and CERN.
New detection paradigm
“As with photons, the ability to detect charged particles with high spatial and temporal precision, beyond what traditional sensing technologies can offer, has the potential to propel the field of high-energy physics towards a new detection paradigm,” Peña explains.
However, the nanowire single-photon detector design is not appropriate for detecting charged particles. Unlike photons, charged particles do not deposit all of their energy at a single point in a wire. Instead, the energy can be spread out along a track, which becomes longer as particle energy increases. Also, at the relativistic energies reached at particle accelerators, the nanowires used in single-photon detectors are too thin to collect the energy required to trigger a particle detection.
To create their new particle detector, Peña’s team used the latest advances in superconductor fabrication. On a thin film of tungsten silicide, they deposited an 8×8, 2 mm2 array of micron-thick superconducting wires.
Tested at Fermilab
To test out their superconducting microwire single-photon detector (SMSPD), they used it to detect high-energy particle beams generated at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility. These included a 12 GeV beam of protons and 8 GeV beams of electrons and pions.
“Our study shows for the first time that SMSPDs are sensitive to protons, electrons, and pions,” Peña explains. “In fact, they behave very similarly when exposed to different particle types. We measured almost the same detection efficiency, as well as spatial and temporal properties.”
The team now aims to develop a deeper understanding of the physics that unfolds as a charged particle passes through a superconducting microwire. “That will allow us to begin optimizing and engineering the properties of the superconducting material and sensor geometry to boost the detection efficiency, the position and timing precision, as well as optimize for the operating temperature of the sensor,” Peña says. With further improvements SMSPDs to become an integral part of high-energy physics experiments – perhaps paving the way for a deeper understanding of fundamental physics.
The research is described in the Journal of Instrumentation.
The post Superconducting microwires detect high-energy particles appeared first on Physics World.
