Particle and Astroparticle Physics Seminar

Searching for neutrinoless double beta decay with nEXO and beyond

David Moore

Yale University

Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) is a hypothesized nuclear decay, which can only occur if neutrinos are Majorana fermions. Observation of 0νββ would demonstrate that lepton number is not conserved, with significant implications for fundamental physics and cosmology. The next generation of detectors will search for a handful of 0νββ events in tonne scale detectors, and will discover the decay if it occurs with a half-life of around 1028 years or less. I will describe the next-generation nEXO detector, which will search for the 0νββ of 136Xe in a 5 tonne liquid xenon (LXe) time projection chamber (TPC) at SNOLAB. If nEXO does not observe 0νββ, a kiloton scale detector may be required to probe the majority of the remaining parameter space for the decay. I will also describe concepts for gas or liquid Xe TPCs that could potentially reach 1030 year half-life sensitivity, as well as possible avenues to procuring the large required quantities of 136Xe for such an experiment.