Acquisition of a Versatile Dilution Refrigerator System for Testing Low Temperature Particle Detectors

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The San Francisco State University (SFSU) Department of Physics and Astronomy will acquire a versatile dilution refrigerator system dedicated to the testing of low temperature elementary particle detectors fabricated by physics Master's students at SFSU and by collaborating researchers and Ph.D. students at nearby institutions including Stanford University (SU), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and the University of California at Berkeley (UCB). These novel detectors will achieve unparalled sensitivity and resolution by sensing quasiparticles, phonons, and electron-hole pairs generated by collisions of incident particles with nuclei and electrons in superconducting and insulating crystals. The initial goals of the research effort are to develop detectors for dark matter searches, neutrino experiments, and X-ray astronomy measurements. As the technology matures, additional applications are likely to include measurements of ultralow alpha radioactivity in bulk materials, Xray fluorescence for trace elements.