The 6 mK temperature was attained on the Mixing Chamber stage with the copper shield in place (about 400 kg of copper, enclosing an approximate volume of 1 m3). The cryogenic system commissioning progressed through a staged approach where components were added step by step: the wires, the lead shields, the fast precooling system, the calibration system, and, finally, the detectors were added.
The detector installation was completed in 2016 and the first cooling down of the CUORE experiment was successfully completed in January 2017. The detectors reached a base temperature of 8 mK. Since then, excluding few initial maintenance stops, the CUORE refrigerator has been running continously allowing to carry out the planned CUORE neutrinoless double beta decays search.
The CUORE refrigerator cooling a 1 ton detector to less than 10 mK sets a world record for mass and temperature reached with a cryogen-free system.
- Italian press release
- Press release on interactions.org
- Poster presented at LTD-14
- C Alduino, et al. The CUORE cryostat: An infrastructure for rare event searches at millikelvin temperatures. CRYOGENICS 102:9–21, 2019. URL, DOI
The CUORE refrigrator during commissioning at LNGS
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