SMuK 2021 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 25: Astroparticle Physics

HK 25.5: Talk

Thursday, September 2, 2021, 18:00–18:15, H4

Neutrinoless double beta decay with XENON1T and XENONnT — •Tim Michael Heinz Wolf — Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg

Liquid xenon (LXe) time-projection-chambers (TPCs), such as XENON1T or its successor XENONnT, are primarily used for low energy Dark Matter (DM) searches but also for other rare decay searches such as neutrinoless double beta (0vbb) decay. The large active mass of LXe (several tonnes) and its low background rate are beneficial for the sensitivity to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) or rare decays such as 0vbb. The isotope Xe136 with a natural abundance of 8.9% is a known emitter of two-neutrino double beta decay and it is a potential emitter of the hypothetical process of 0vbb decay with a Q-value of 2457.8keV. The discovery of the 0vbb process would imply lepton number violation and would confirm the Majorana nature of neutrinos, a property that has never been seen before in nature for fundamental particles. I will review the ongoing efforts in XENON1T and XENONnT in this context.