Detection of coherent elastic neutrino scattering on nuclei, a status report for a detector development based on metastable superconductors

Coherent elastic neutrino scattering on nuclei can only be detected via the recoil energy of the nucleus. We try to develop a detector based on metastable superconducting grains to detect these small recoil energies. Experiments testing some fundamental properties of a detector using metastable Sn and Cd grains are presented. In the case of Cd a sensitivity of at least 24 eV/μm3 (normalized to the volume of the grains) was achieved. We expect a still higher sensitivity if superconductors with very lowT c are used and the quality of the grains (sphericity, size distribution, solid state properties) is improved.