Darmstadt 2016 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 41: Astroparticle Physics II

HK 41.1: Group Report

Wednesday, March 16, 2016, 16:30–17:00, S1/01 A02

Status and Prospects of the COBRA 0νββ Experiment — •Robert Temminghoff for the COBRA collaboration — TU Dortmund, Exp. Physik IV

COBRA is a next-generation low-background experiment aiming to search for neutrinoless double beta-decay (0νββ) based on commercially available CdZnTe semiconductor detectors operated at room temperature.

COBRA is currently in its demonstrator phase. 64 coplanar-grid (CPG) detectors with a total mass of about 400 g are in operation at the LNGS underground laboratory. To reduce the background as much as possible, COBRA relies on passive shielding, the use of radio-pure materials and pulse-shape analysis techniques.

While in principle a total of nine 0νββ candidates can be observed in CdZnTe, the main isotope of interest is ¹¹⁶Cd with a Q-value of 2814 keV which is well above the highest naturally occurring γ-line. A high precision measurement of the fourfold forbidden non-unique beta-decay of ¹¹³Cd is also possible with the COBRA demonstrator.

This talk will give an overview of the current status and latest results of the COBRA experiment. These include new half-life limits of several candidate isotopes and investigations on the long-term stability of CdZnTe detectors. Plans for using larger detectors in the near future will also be discussed.