The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) – also cuore (Italian for 'heart'; [ˈkwɔːre]) – is a particle physics facility located underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Assergi, Italy. CUORE was designed primarily as a search for neutrinoless double beta decay in 130Te, a process that has never been observed. It uses tellurium dioxide (TeO2) crystals as both the source of the decay and as bolometers to detect the resulting electrons. CUORE searches for the characteristic signal of neutrinoless double beta decay, a small peak in the observed energy spectrum around the known decay energy; for 130Te, this is Q = 2527.518 ± 0.013 keV. CUORE can also search for signals from dark matter candidates, such as axions and WIMPs.
An observation of neutrinoless double beta decay would conclusively show that neutrinos are Majorana fermions; that is, they are their own antiparticles. This is relevant to many topics in particle physics, including lepton number conservation, nuclear structure, and neutrino masses and properties.
The CUORE collaboration involves physicists from several countries, primarily from the United States and Italy. CUORE is funded by the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of Italy, the United States Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation of the United States.
In September 2014, as part of the testing of the CUORE dilution refrigerator, scientists in the CUORE collaboration cooled a copper vessel with a volume of one cubic meter to 6 mK (0.006 K, −273.144 °C) for 15 days, setting a record for the lowest temperature in the known natural universe over such a large contiguous volume.
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