CUORE: The Three Towers Test

CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) will be part of the next generation of detectors used to search for neutrinoless double beta decay ($0\nu\beta\beta$). Located in Assergi, Italy at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS), CUORE will be a large cryogenic bolometer composed of 988 tellurium dioxide (TeO$_2$) detectors with a total mass of 750 kg, and will search for $0\nu\beta\beta$ in $^{130}$Te. The intermediate upgrade, CUORE-0, first involves the disassembly of Cuoricino, CUORE's smaller counterpart in operation since 2003, and the readying of the Three Towers test, a diagnostic detector configuration. As the experiment will monitor the extremely rare event of $0\nu\beta\beta$, all factors contributing to background need to be minimized to effectively increase the sensitivity. We assisted the LNGS researchers over the summer of 2008 by supporting R\&D work with the Three Towers test to reduce the radioactive background of the experiment. Activities involved decontaminating the copper frame of radon daughters, and chemically etching and lapping the TeO$_2$ crystals with nitric acid and silicon dioxide, respectively, to remove surface contaminants which contribute to background counts. This work was supported in part by NSF grant PHY- 0653284 and the California State Faculty Support Grant.