Sensitivity of NEXT-100 to neutrinoless double beta decay

By J. Martín-Albo, J. Vidal, P. Ferrario, M. Nebot-Guinot, J. Gomez-Cadenas, V. Álvarez, C. Azevedo, F. Borges, S. Cárcel, J. Carríon and 53 more. 2015

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A bstractNEXT-100 is an electroluminescent high-pressure xenon gas time projection chamber that will search for the neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay of 136Xe. The detector possesses two features of great value for 0νββ searches: energy resolution better than 1% FWHM at the Q value of 136Xe and track reconstruction for the discrimination of signal and background events. This combination results in excellent sensitivity, as discussed in this paper. Material-screening measurements and a detailed Monte Carlo detector simulation predict a background rate for NEXT-100 of at most 4 × 10−4 counts keV−1 kg−1 yr−1. Accordingly, the detector will reach a sensitivity to the 0νββ-decay half-life of 2.8 × 1025 years (90% CL) for an exposure of 100 kg·year, or 6.0 × 1025 years after a run of 3 effective years.

Subfields: Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Radiation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/409bf1b402aef792dcce8a736b86db857f42a20a