CUORE-0 is a collaboration-wide effort (~120 scientists/engineers from ~ 20 institutions) and represents an important step toward the CUORE experiment.

The CUORE-0 detector consists of a complete CUORE tower: 52 TeO₂ cubic crystal absorbers, each 50.0 mm per side and 750 g in mass, arranged in 13 planes. This tower is encapsulated in a dedicated copper shield, unlike what happens in CUORE where the ~10 mK-shield surrounds all the towers together to allow anti-coincidence cuts.
CUORE-0 is being operated in the Cuoricino refrigerator in Hall A at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), Italy. The detector base temperature is about 10 mK. It adopts all the procedures for the assembly foreseen for CUORE itself, which will be totally different from the ones adopted for Cuoricino.
CUORE-0 has three main goals:

• full test of the new CUORE assembly line
  • high statistics check of the radioactive background reduction
  • high statistics check of the improved uniformity of bolometric response
  • identify which operations are critical for the success of CUORE
  • reveal flaws and inefficiencies in the assembly procedures
• permit a thorough exercise of the analysis framework
• provide an opportunity to test the skill sets necessary within the collaboration