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arXiv · 2609.23110

Single-electron detection in a high-purity Ge device

Antoine Armatol·Corinne Augier·Laurent Bergé·Julien Billard·Harvey Birch·Juliette Blé·Clarence Chang·Yen-Yung Chang·Luke Chaplinsky·Gordon Cline·Alec Cochard·Ion Cojocari·Jules Colas·Simon Connolly·Maryvonne De Jesus·Pierre de Marcillac·Kamil Dwinger·Romain Faure·Simon Fiorucci·Maurice Garcia-Sciveres·Jules Gascon·Ryan Gibbons·Gil Gilchriese·Cloé Girard-Carillo·Wei Guo·Leila Haegel·Scott Haselschwardt·Scott Hertel·Tyler Horoho·Keith Hunter·Leslie Juigne·Alexandre Juillard·Alex Kavner·Jacob Lamblin·Tatiana Le-Bellec·Junsong Lin·Rupak Mahapatra·Stefanos Marnieros·Claire Marrache-Kikuchi·Nicolas Martini·Will Matava·Daniel McKinsey·Connor McLaughlin·Johann Menu·Knut Moraa·Valentina Novati·Emiliano Olivieri·Björn Penning·Mark Platt·Denys Poda·Matt Pyle·Yinghe Qi·Rafsan Rabbi·Ivar Rydstrom·Bernard Sadoulet·Silvia Scorza·Bruno Serfass·Peter Sorensen·Gabrielle Soum-Sidikov·Samara Steinfeld·Henry Su·Toki Suzuki·Ronald Vaughn II·Charlie Veihmeyer·Paul Vittaz·Gensheng Wang·Yue Wang·Michael R. Williams·Joanna Wuko·Volodymyr Yefremenko·Alexandre Broniatowski·Louis Dumoulin
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Abstract

High-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors are among the most powerful instruments for gamma ray spectroscopy, combining exceptional energy resolution with large active volumes. Although they operate close to the fundamental resolution limit at high energies, their performance at very low energies has long been limited by electronic noise, restricting detection thresholds to above approximately 30 electron-hole pairs ($\sim$100 eV). Here we introduce a cryogenic HPGe detector architecture that achieves single electron-hole pair sensitivity by calorimetrically measuring ionization at temperatures near 20 mK. The device integrates a NbSi transition-edge sensor into a point-contact-inspired geometry, concentrating athermal phonon energy generated during charge drift and enabling eV-scale sensitivity ultimately set by the semiconductor band gap. Beyond single-charge detection, the device rejects the low-energy excess background that limits existing cryogenic low-threshold technologies, establishing a pathway towards discrimination between electron- and nuclear-recoil events below 100 eV. These advances open a route towards next-generation detectors for direct dark matter searches, coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, and nuclear reactor monitoring for non-proliferation applications.

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Antoine Armatol, Corinne Augier, Laurent Bergé, Julien Billard, Harvey Birch, Juliette Blé, Clarence Chang, Yen-Yung Chang, Luke Chaplinsky, Gordon Cline, Alec Cochard, Ion Cojocari, Jules Colas, Simon Connolly, Maryvonne De Jesus, Pierre de Marcillac, Kamil Dwinger, Romain Faure, Simon Fiorucci, Maurice Garcia-Sciveres, Jules Gascon, Ryan Gibbons, Gil Gilchriese, Cloé Girard-Carillo, Wei Guo, Leila Haegel, Scott Haselschwardt, Scott Hertel, Tyler Horoho, Keith Hunter, Leslie Juigne, Alexandre Juillard, Alex Kavner, Jacob Lamblin, Tatiana Le-Bellec, Junsong Lin, Rupak Mahapatra, Stefanos Marnieros, Claire Marrache-Kikuchi, Nicolas Martini, Will Matava, Daniel McKinsey, Connor McLaughlin, Johann Menu, Knut Moraa, Valentina Novati, Emiliano Olivieri, Björn Penning, Mark Platt, Denys Poda, Matt Pyle, Yinghe Qi, Rafsan Rabbi, Ivar Rydstrom, Bernard Sadoulet, Silvia Scorza, Bruno Serfass, Peter Sorensen, Gabrielle Soum-Sidikov, Samara Steinfeld, Henry Su, Toki Suzuki, Ronald Vaughn II, Charlie Veihmeyer, Paul Vittaz, Gensheng Wang, Yue Wang, Michael R. Williams, Joanna Wuko, Volodymyr Yefremenko, Alexandre Broniatowski, Louis Dumoulin. 2026-09-19. Single-electron detection in a high-purity Ge device. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23110

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