High-Resolution Metallic Magnetic Calorimeters for beta-Spectroscopy on 187-Rhenium and Position Resolved X-Ray Spectroscopy

This thesis describes the development of metallic magnetic calorimeters (MMCs) for high resolution spectroscopy. MMCs are energy dispersive particle detectors based on the calorimetric principle which are typically operated at temperatures below 100 mK. The detectors make use of a paramagnetic temperature sensor to transform the temperature rise upon the absorption of a particle in the detector into a measurable magnetic flux change in a dc-SQUID. The application of MMCs for neutrino mass measurements and their advantages with respect to other approaches are discussed. In view of this application the development of an MMC optimized for β-endpoint spectroscopy on 187-rhenium is presented. A fully micro-fabricated X-ray detector is characterized and performs close to design values. Furthermore, a new technique to more efficiently couple rhenium absorbers mechanically and thermally to the sensor was developed and successfully tested. By employing a metallic contact, signal rise times faster than 5 μs could be observed with superconducting rhenium absorbers. In addition to the single pixel detectors, an alternative approach of reading out multiple pixels was developed in this work, too. Here, the individual absorbers have a different thermal coupling to only one temperature sensor resulting in a distribution of different pulse shapes. Straightforward position discrimination by means of rise time analysis is demonstrated for a four pixel MMC and a thermal model of the detector is provided. Unprecedented so far, an energy resolution of less than ∆E_FWHM < 5 eV for 5.9 keV X-rays was achieved across all absorbers.