A Dry Dilution Refrigerator for the Test of CUORE Components

We report the design, the construction and performance of a dilution refrigerator using a pulse-tube cooler as a first cryogenic stage. Both the pulse tube and the dilution unit are commercial. The absence of a Dewar containing cryogenic fluids makes this new type of refrigerator particularly versatile: it was built to carry out cryogenic tests on CUORE components. The system provides a cooling power of about 0.2 mW at 100 mK, and reaches temperatures as low as 6 mK.