Developing Charged Particle Thermal Kinetic Inductance Detectors (CP-TKIDs) for Nuclear Physics

Precision nuclear physics experiments provide an ideal space to search for physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM). These experiments have often relied on semiconductor and scintillator detector technologies which do not reach the ideal energy resolution for such experiments and can be difficult to scale to the active areas required. A promising alternative is the Charged Particle Thermal Kinetic Inductance Detector (CP-TKID), a type of superconducting microcalorimeter that can be easily multiplexed to large arrays and is designed to detect electrons and protons from below 1 keV to over 1 MeV. We have developed single CP-TKID devices 5 mm square and up to 1.5 mm thick, a novel geometry for these types of detectors that is an important step towards the meter-scale detector coverage we envision. We report on the development of these detectors and early measurements and simulations we have performed, including recent studies of naturally occurring background radiation relevant to decoherence in superconducting qubits. We will also discuss progress towards testing CP-TKIDs with monoenergetic beta sources and future plans for a demonstration experiment.