Boldly exploring the Majorana Landscape. The NEXT program for neutrinoless double beta decay searches
by
Juan Jose Gomez Cadenas(Ikerbasque (Basque Foundation for Science), Bilbao, Spain & DIPC, Spain)
→
Europe/Rome
Aula Touschek (LNF)
Aula Touschek
LNF
Description
Massive neutrinos could be Majorana particles, identical to their own antiparticles. The only practical way of finding out if this possibility has been realised by Nature, is observing a rare nuclear process, called
neutrinoless double beta decay (bb0nu). The best experiments of the field have established that the lifetime of bb0nu is longer than 10^26 years and current data suggest that at least two orders of magnitude more may be needed to observe a signal. This means
that the next generation of experiments will need exposures in the range of tens of ton year, and even more crucially, background rates approaching to zero.
In this talk I will present the NEXT program for bb0nu searches. I will review the current status of the experiment and will describe the R&D leading to future NEXT apparatus, with target masses in the ton range, which could be operating in the second half of this decade. I will also discuss how NEXT can implement a unique signal, observing, in (delayed) coincidence, the two electrons and the Ba2+ dication produced in the decay Xe-136 -> Ba2+-136 + 2e (+ 2nu). The NEXT-BOLD project, funded with an ERC Synergy grant is developing the R&D needed to boldly explore the Majorana Landscape.
