Dark counts in optical superconducting transition-edge sensors for rare-event searches
L. Manenti, Carlo Pepe, I. Sarnoff, Tengiz Ibrayev, Panagiotis Oikonomou, Artem Knyazev, E. Monticone, Hobey Garrone, Fiona Alder, O. Fawwaz, Alexander J. Millar, K. Morå, Hamad Shams, F. Arneodo, M. Rajteri
Abstract
Superconducting transition-edge sensors (TESs) are a type of quantum sensor known for their high single-photon detection efficiency and low background. This makes TESs ideal for particle-physics experiments searching for rare events. In this work, we present a comprehensive characterization of the background in optical TESs, distinguishing three types of events: electrical-noise, high-energy, and photonlike events. We introduce computational methods to automate the classification of events. We experimentally verify and simulate the source of the high-energy events. We also isolate the photonlike events, the expected signal in dielectric haloscopes searching for dark-matter dark photons, and achieve a photonlike dark-count rate of 3.6\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}$ in the 0.8--3.2 eV energy range.