Hamburg 2016 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 36: Neutrinoloser Doppelbeta-Zerfall II

T 36.3: Talk

Monday, February 29, 2016, 17:20–17:35, VMP9 SR 07

The next Enriched Xenon Observatory - A Search for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay — •Reimund Bayerlein, Patrick Hufschmidt, Ako Jamil, Judith Schneider, Michael Wagenpfeil, Gerrit Wrede, Tobias Ziegler, Jürgen Hößl, Gisela Anton, and Thilo Michel — ECAP, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

The question whether the neutrino could be its own antiparticle is still not answered. The most practical way to test this is the search for the neutrinoless double beta decay. The half-life of this decay is related to the value of a linear combination of the masses of the neutrino mass eigenstates and therefore provides information about the absolute mass scale of neutrinos. The nEXO experiment - the successor of EXO200 - is currently under research and development. The baseline concept comprises a single-phase liquid xenon (LXe) time projection chamber (TPC) filled with about 5 tons of liquid xenon enriched to about 80% Xe-136 as the double beta decay nuclide.

In order to fully cover the range of the effective Majorana neutrino mass in the inverted hierarchy scheme, excellent energy resolution is required. Therefore, a position-resolving, low-noise charge readout and very efficient light collection and detection are mandatory. For the purpose of very low background levels radiopure Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) have to be used to detect the scintillation light of LXe. Due to the large half-life a huge detector mass and long term measurement are needed. In this talk the baseline-concept of the experimental setup will be presented.