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Title: What law governs the decay and reset of the excess rate?
Plain: The excess fades in the weeks and months after a detector is cooled and partly returns if it is warmed and cooled again. The precise shape of this fading is a clue to its cause.
Precise: Let $R(t)$ be the excess event rate above threshold at time $t$ after the end of cooldown. Data from CRESST-III and NUCLEUS have been described by sums of exponentials with time constants of tens to hundreds of days and by power laws $R \sim t^{-\alpha}$. The question is the functional form of $R(t)$, its dependence on cooldown rate and on the maximum temperature of an intermediate warm-up, and whether these match a relaxation model (e.g., a distribution of activation barriers in a glassy stress or defect system).
Settled by: Long continuous runs on identical detectors with controlled cooldown rates and warm-up temperatures, fitted against competing relaxation models.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: value
References: (empty)
Literature status: open
Status note: NUCLEUS (Eur. Phys. J. C 86, 831, 2026) found $R(t)$ best described by a power law with common exponent $-0.59 \pm 0.06$, with $t$ measured from reaching 4 K, and lower initial rates after slower cooldown.
Posed since: (empty)