The Possible Impact of Thermal Detectors in Nuclear and Subnuclear Physics

Abstract

Historically the first use of a calorimeter in nuclear physics dates to 190: when P. Curie and A. Laborde [1] used a calorimeter to reveal the energy produced by radioactivity. Another great contribution of calorimetry to fundamental physics was the experimental discovery that some energy was missing in beta decay of ²²⁰Bi [2]. This fact was interpreted by W. Pauli in his famous letter of Dec. 4–1930 as due to the emission of a neutral particle later named neutrino by Enrico Fermi. In this brief and admittedly incomplete review I will summarize the present experimental status of a few problems in subnuclear physics where the “thermal approach” can lead to important and possibly unexpected results. I will limit myself to bolometers [3] which have been proved recently [4–8] to perform at low temperature as good and sometimes even fast [8] single-particle detectors. Many developments and plans on the “bolometric” and on the equally important “junction” approach have been presented at this conference.