A paper by CREF researcher Kristian Piscicchia and collaborators was selected to appear on Condensed Matter’s cover of the June Issue. (Volume 9, Issue 2, 2024). The paper’s title is “Optimization of a BEGe Detector Setup for Testing Quantum Foundations in the Underground LNGS Laboratory”.

In this work, researchers report on tests performed with an experimental apparatus prototype based on a broad-energy germanium detector to investigate topical, foundational issues in quantum mechanics. Their recent phenomenological analyses demonstrated the importance of pushing the research of new physics signal, predicted in these fields, to an energy range below 10 keV. We describe the development of the dedicated data acquisition system and the pulse shape discrimination algorithm, which have already allowed us to get a factor two improvement in the lower energy threshold. Plans are discussed to further improve the lower energy threshold to the level of a few keV.

Full article at https://doi.org/10.3390/condmat9020022