- May 13, 2024, 2:00 pm US/Central
- Curia II
- Ryan Linehan, Fermilab
- Host: Dylan Temples, dtemples@fnal.gov
Abstract: In recent years, the lack of a conclusive detection of WIMP dark matter at the 10 GeV/c^2 mass scale and above has encouraged development of low-threshold detector technology aimed at probing lighter dark matter candidates. Detectors based on Cooper-pair-breaking sensors have emerged as a promising avenue for this detection due to the low (meV-scale) energy required for breaking a Cooper pair in most superconductors. Among them, devices based on superconducting qubits are interesting candidates for sensing due to their observed sensitivity to broken Cooper pairs. In this seminar we will discuss simulation-based estimates of the efficacy of such qubits as low-threshold phonon-mediated detectors of particle impacts in the substrate onto which the qubits are patterned. In particular, we explore the energy resolution and threshold of qubits operated in an energy relaxation sensing scheme akin to that used in recent studies of radiation-induced correlated errors. We close with a discussion of the other ways in which superconducting qubits can be used as particle impact sensors, and the landscape of the Fermilab QSC group’s work to theoretically and experimentally explore and refine their potential as low-threshold detectors.