近日，四川大学物理学院的幸浩洋及其研究小组与四川大学原子核科学与技术研究所的朱敬军等人合作并取得一项新进展。经过不懈努力，他们提出用于探测暗物质的固体氩低温声子探测器模型。相关研究成果已于2023年12月15日在国际知名学术期刊《中国物理C》上发表。

在过去的几年中，声子探测器由于其低阈值和高分辨率而成为探测低质量暗物质的主流技术。这些探测器采用声子-光或声子-电子相互作用的双相探测器，大大推进了直接暗物质探测工作。氩气作为一种低本底、高储量的探测介质，在这一领域也发挥了至关重要的作用。液-氩单相探测器和气-液两相时间投影室(TPCs)在直接探测大质量暗物质方面做出了重大贡献。通过整合这些不同类型的探测器，可以降低暗物质探测中相应质量截面的上限。

该研究团队提出了一种利用固体氩气作为吸收剂的声子探测器，它结合了双相探测器的优点。然而，由于需要几十毫开尔文(mK)范围内的超低温环境，固体氩气声子探测器性能的实验研究目前受到技术限制。因此，本研究提出的固体氩气声子探测器的性能分析仅基于蓝宝石声子探测器。虽然这个近似和实际性能之间可能存在差异，声子探测器的固有特性允许对固体氩气声子探测器的潜在能力进行定性评估。

附：英文原文

Title: Cryogenic phonon-detector model with solid argon for detecting dark matter

Author: Yu Liu, Lei Zhang, Yulu Yan, Shin-Ted Lin, Shukui Liu, Jinjun Zhu, Changjian Tang, Haoyang Xing

Issue&Volume: 2023-12-15

Abstract: Over the past few years, phonon detectors have emerged as a prevailing technology for detecting low-mass dark matter due to their low thresholds and high resolution. These detectors, which employ either dual-phase detectors combining phonon-light or phonon-electron interactions, have significantly advanced direct dark matter detection efforts. Argon, as a low-background and high-reserve detection medium, has also played a crucial role in this field. Both liquid-argon single-phase detectors and gas-liquid two-phase time projection chambers (TPCs) have contributed substantially to the direct detection of high-mass dark matter. By integrating these distinct detector types, the upper limits of the corresponding mass cross-section in dark matter detection can be lowered. We propose a phonon detector utilizing solid argon as the absorber, which combines the advantages of both aforementioned detector types. However, due to the requirement for an ultra-low temperature environment in the tens of millikelvin (mK) range, experimental investigations of solid argon phonon detector performance are currently constrained by technical limitations. Therefore, the performance analysis of the solid argon phonon detector presented in this study is only based on sapphire phonon detectors. Although there may be discrepancies between this approximation and the actual performance, the intrinsic characteristics of phonon detectors permit a qualitative evaluation of the solid argon phonon detector's potential capabilities.

DOI: 10.1088/1674-1137/acfaee

Source: http://hepnp.ihep.ac.cn/article/doi/10.1088/1674-1137/acfaee