Spontaneous generation of athermal phonon bursts within bulk silicon causing excess noise, low energy background events, and quasiparticle poisoning in superconducting sensors

Solid state phonon detectors used in the search for dark matter and coherent neutrino nucleus interactions (CE ν NS) require excellent energy resolution (eV-scale or below) and low backgrounds. An unknown source of phonon bursts, the low energy excess (LEE), dominates other above-threshold backgroun