The small specific heat of superconducting materials at temperatures far below Tc makes them very attractive as particle absorbers of high-resolution low temperature micro-calorimeters. However, so far the successful use of superconductors for this application has been prevented by the complex thermalisation behaviour in the down conversion of the absorbed energy to thermal excitations. In this work the thermalisation behaviour in two different superconductors was investigated experimentally. Two particle detectors based on the concept of metallic magnetic calorimeters were fabricated, one with an absorber made of high purity aluminium, the other one with an absorber made of Al:Mn2000 ppm. Metallic magnetic calorimeters are low temperature detectors operated below 100mK using a paramagnetic material in a small magnetic field as temperature sensor. A particle absorption heats up absorber and sensor and causes a change of magnetisation which is read out as magnetic flux change in a low-noise SQUID magnetometer. The thermalisation behaviour was characterised at different operating temperatures and magnetic fields. The observed signal shapes suggest that Mn ions slow down the diffusion of heat in the absorber material. The very astonishing, previously observed effect, that at very low temperatures not all of the deposited energy seems to contribute in form of heat to the signal was also found for the detector with pure Al absorber. Instead, the detector with Al:Mn absorber, did not share this effect. Further, the data analysis of the detector with Al:Mn absorber lead to the idea for a new type of sensor for low temperature calorimeters using a partially quenched superconductor in an inhomogeneous magnetic field. A detector prototype using hafnium as such a temperature sensor was developed, analysed and described in a first theoretical model. |