Hannover 2013 – scientific programme
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SYMS: Symposium 100 Years of Mass Spectrometry
SYMS 2: 100 Years of Mass Spectrometry 2
SYMS 2.1: Invited Talk
Friday, March 22, 2013, 14:00–14:30, E 415
Search for resonant double-electron capture — •Sergey Eliseev1, Klaus Blaum1, Michael Block2, Christian Droese3, Dmitriy Nesterenko4, Yuri Novikov4, Enrique Minaya Ramirez2, Christian Roux1, Lutz Schweikhard3, and Kay Zuber5 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany — 2GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany — 3Institut für Physik, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, Greifswald, Germany — 4PNPI, St. Petersburg, Russia — 5Institut für Kern- und Teilchenphysik, Technische Universität, Dresden, Germany
It is still unknown whether neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana particles. An answer to this question can be obtained from neutrinoless double-electron capture. An observation of this process would prove that the neutrino is a Majorana particle. A measurement of the half-life of this process would allow a determination of the effective Majorana neutrino mass.
In the search for the nuclide with the largest probability for neutrinoless double-electron capture, we have determined the Q-values of several potentially suitable nuclides with SHIPTRAP by Penning-trap mass-ratio measurements. The ECEC-transition in 152Gd has been determined to have the smallest half-life of 1026 years for a 1 eV neutrino mass among all known 0νECEC-transitions, which makes 152Gd the most promising candidate for the search for neutrino-less double electron capture. This contribution will summarize the recent experimental results.