Speaker
Description
The Colorado Underground Research Institute (CURIE) is a shallow underground laboratory under development in the Edgar Experimental Mine (EEM), a former gold mine in Idaho Springs, Colorado, owned and operated by the Colorado School of Mines and located roughly 30 minutes from campus. The lab space sits beneath ~200 m of rock (~415 m.w.e.), which reduces the cosmic-ray muon flux by a factor of ~700 relative to sea level and removes the hadronic and electromagnetic components of the cosmic-ray shower. CURIE is intended as a testbed for superconducting qubits, low-temperature detectors, and quantum sensors, and as a site for studying cosmogenic backgrounds relevant to rare-event searches.
The facility consists of three sites within the EEM, excavated and outfitted with ventilation, power, and networking by Mining Engineering students. Site 0, the Subatomic Particle Hideout, is operational and used for background measurements and detector tests. Cryolab I is being prepared with a clean room, 440 V power, and chilled-water hookups to house a Maybell dilution refrigerator; Site 2 is planned as additional lab space.
A background characterization program is underway. Muon fluxes have been measured with scintillator coincidence setups and a motorized muon telescope that maps the angular distribution at each site, and are compared against MUTE transport calculations through the measured overburden. Muon-induced neutrons and gammas are modeled with a MUTE-to-Geant4 pipeline and measured with a He-3 spectrometer, an HPGe detector, and a large liquid scintillator. Vibration, magnetic field, and radon levels are monitored with accelerometers, SQUID magnetometers, and radon meters, with remote telemetry across the sites.
This talk summarizes the current state of the facility, the background measurements to date, and near-term plans: installation of the dilution refrigerator, an active muon veto above it, and first deployments of TES detectors and SQUID magnetometers underground.