München 2019 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 23: Astroparticle Physics I

HK 23.1: Gruppenbericht

Dienstag, 19. März 2019, 14:00–14:30, HS 18

Search for neutrinoless double beta decay beyond a half-life of 10²⁶ yr with GERDA — •Roman Hiller for the GERDA collaboration — Universität Zürich

The GERDA collaboration searches for neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) of ⁷⁶Ge. A discovery of this hypothetical decay would establish neutrinos as Majorana fermions and imply a violation of lepton number conservation. In GERDA, germanium detectors enriched in ⁷⁶Ge are deployed in a cryostat filled with liquid argon (LAr). Instrumenting the cryostat with photosensors, scintillation light in the argon can be used to veto external background events. With this concept, GERDA reached an unprecedented low background for germanium detectors and will remain effectively background free up to its design exposure of 100 kg yr. With the latest data release mid 2018 GERDA was the first experiment to surpass a half-life sensitivity of 10²⁶ yr for 0νββ decay. Afterwards the experiment was upgraded, deploying a new type of germanium detector and improving the LAr instrumentation. A summary of the latest results and an outlook on the performance after the upgrade of the experiment will be given.