Superconductivity And Particle Detection Proceedings Of The International Workshop

Superconductors today constitute a major focus of activity in the development of high resolution detectors for many applications. This volume collects the papers of an international workshop on the basic theoretical and experimental issues involved in the interaction between particles and superconductors. It emphasizes the involved condensed matter aspects of non-equilibrium time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations, metastable superconductivity, quasiparticle and phonon lifetimes, and quasiparticle trapping, as well as low-noise pulse electronics, detector fabrication and low background cryogenics.

This workshop is a series of meetings organized by the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Torino, Italy. It focuses on the potential of Superconductivity in the field of radiation detection and is particularly timely and important. The proceedings of the workshop highlights research on Superconducting Detectors for Nuclear Physics, Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Superconducting Tunneling Junctions, Superheated Superconducting Granules among other topics.

This thoroughly peer-reviewed proceedings of the ninth international workshop on low temperature detectors provides a snapshot of the state-of-the-art in low temperature particle and radiation detectors. In 134 original research papers, the physics and applications of this new and extremely high performance type of detectors is described in detail. This includes their application to such diverse fields as astrophysics at all wavelengths from the submillimeter to gamma-ray, dark matter searches, neutrino astrophysics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, biophysics, and materials science.

SNED Proceedings (Naples, Italy, May 28-June 1, 2001)

The nature of dark matter remains one of the preeminent mysteries in physics and cosmology. It appears to require the existence of new particles whose interactions to ordinary matter are extraordinarily feeble. One well-motivated candidate is the axion, an extraordinarily light neutral particle that may possibly be detected by looking for their conversion to detectable microwaves in the presence of a strong magnetic field. This has led to a number of experimental searches that are beginning to probe plausible axion model space and may discover the axion in the near future. These proceedings discuss the challenges of designing and operating tunable resonant cavities and detectors at ultralow temperatures. The topics discussed here have potential application far beyond the field of dark matter detection and may be applied to resonant cavities for accelerators as well as designing superconducting detectors for quantum information and computing applications. This work is intended for graduate students and researchers interested in learning the unique requirements for designing and operating microwave cavities and detectors for direct axion searches and to introduce several proposed experimental concepts that are still in the prototype stage.

This volume will contain both invited and contributed papers which focus on the search for new high-Tc materials, characterization of their physical properties and microstructures, basic applications and the application of high-Tc superconductors.