Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “neutrinoless double beta decay”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

DUNE’s Potential to Search for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

Neutrinoless double beta decay is a forbidden process by the standard model due to a violation of lepton number and could be piece of the matter/anti-matter asymmetry puzzle. Its rarity makes it very difficult to search for, but if found could aid in figuring out the mass hierarchy. The idea is to take advantage of DUNE's size and capabilities to attempt to detect the decay by doping the liquid argon with Xenon, a candidate isotope for this decay. Thus, we need to know whether this search is feasible within DUNE’s framework

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Nuclear Matrix Elements for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay

Neutrinoless double-beta decay ($0\nu\beta\beta$) is a rare hypothesised process that, if discovered, would establish that the neutrino is Majorana, that is, it is its own antiparticle. Interpretation of experimental results relies on knowledge of nuclear matrix elements, whose large model uncertainty is the limiting factor in comparing measured (bounds on) half-lives to the neutrino mass. Nuclear effective field theory and lattice QCD have the potential to compute these matrix elements with better control over uncertainties, enhancing the discovery potential of next-generation $0\nu\beta\beta$ experiments. This work will survey various lattice QCD double-beta decay calculations and discuss their implications.

Grebe, Anthony V. [Fermilab] (ORCID:00000003103201↗
DOE OSTI2024

Survey of neutrino flavor predictions and the neutrinoless double beta decay funnel

The neutrinoless double beta decay experimental effort continues to make tremendous progress with hopes of covering the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy in coming years and pushing from the quasidegenerate hierarchy into the normal hierarchy. As neutrino oscillation data are starting to suggest that the mass ordering may be normal, we may well be faced with staring down the funnel of death: a region of parameter space in the normal ordering where—for a particular cancellation among the absolute neutrino mass scale, the Majorana phases, and the oscillation parameters—the neutrinoless double beta decay rate may be vanishingly small. To answer the question of whether this region of parameter space is theoretically preferred, we survey five broad categories of flavor model structures which make various different predictions for parameters relevant for neutrinoless double beta decay to determine how likely it is that the rate may be in this funnel region. We find that a non-negligible fraction of predictions surveyed are at least partially in the funnel region. Our results can guide model builders and experimentalists alike in focusing their efforts on theoretically motivated regions of parameter space. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Projected sensitivity of the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment to the two-neutrino and neutrinoless double $\beta$ decays of $^{134}$Xe

The projected sensitivity of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment to two-neutrino and neutrinoless double beta decay of 134 Xe is presented. LZ is a 10-tonne xenon time projection chamber optimized for the detection of dark matter particles, that is expected to start operating in 2021 at Sanford Underground Research Facility, USA. Its large mass of natural xenon provides an exceptional opportunity to search for the double beta decay of 134 Xe, for which xenon detectors enriched in 136 Xe are less effective. For the two-neutrino decay mode, LZ is predicted to exclude values of the half-life up to 1.7 x 10 24 years at 90% confidence level (CL), and has a three-sigma observation potential of 8.7 x 10 23 years, approaching the predictions of nuclear models. For the neutrinoless decay mode LZ, is projected to exclude values of the half-life up to 7.3 x 10 24 years at 90% CL.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2020

Sterile neutrinos and neutrinoless double beta decay in effective field theory

We investigate neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) in the presence of sterile neutrinos with Majorana mass terms. These gauge-singlet fields are allowed to interact with Standard-Model (SM) fields via renormalizable Yukawa couplings as well as higher-dimensional gauge-invariant operators up to dimension seven in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory extended with sterile neutrinos. At the GeV scale, we use Chiral effective field theory involving sterile neutrinos to connect the operators at the level of quarks and gluons to hadronic interactions involving pions and nucleons. This allows us to derive an expression for 0νββ rates for various isotopes in terms of phase-space factors, hadronic low-energy constants, nuclear matrix elements, the neutrino masses, and the Wilson coefficients of higher-dimensional operators. The required hadronic low-energy constants and nuclear matrix elements depend on the neutrino masses, for which we obtain interpolation formulae grounded in QCD and chiral perturbation theory that improve existing formulae that are only valid in a small regime of neutrino masses. The resulting framework can be used directly to assess the impact of 0νββ experiments on scenarios with light sterile neutrinos and should prove useful in global analyses of sterile-neutrino searches. We per- form several phenomenological studies of 0νββ in the presence of sterile neutrinos with and without higher-dimensional operators. We find that non-standard interactions involving sterile neutrinos have a dramatic impact on 0νββ phenomenology, and next-generation experiments can probe such interactions up to scales of $\mathcal O$ (100) TeV.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Collaborative Research Towards a tonne-scale bolometer-based neutrinoless double beta decay experiment (Final Report)

Cryogenic bolometers are an excellent technology for neutrinoless double beta decay searches owing to their very high energy resolution and potential for high radiopurity. The current most advanced large-scale experiment using these detectors is the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE). The largest source of background in CUORE is degraded alpha particles, emitted from shallow depths of the detector holders, which can deposit a thermal energy signature similar to neutrinoless double beta decay. To mitigate this background, the CUPID concept (CUORE Upgrade with Particle IDentification) proposes to use scintillating cryogenic detectors. Detecting both the scintillation light and the thermal signal allows discrimination between alpha particle events and beta/gamma events. We report on the design and execution of R&D tests to optimize the design of the single detector module, in particular the scintillation light collection efficiency at cryogenic temperatures.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Reconstructing neutrinoless double beta decay event kinematics in a xenon gas detector with vertex tagging

If neutrinoless double beta decay is discovered, the next natural step would be understanding the lepton number violating physics responsible for it. Several alternatives exist beyond the exchange of light neutrinos. Some of these mechanisms can be distinguished by measuring phase-space observables, namely the opening angle cos θ among the two decay electrons, and the electron energy spectra, T 1 and T 2 . In this work, we study the statistical accuracy and precision in measuring these kinematic observables in a future xenon gas detector with the added capability to precisely locate the decay vertex. For realistic detector conditions (a gas pressure of 10 bar and spatial resolution of 4 mm), we find that the average $\overline{cos θ}$ and $\overline{T_1}$ values can be reconstructed with a precision of 0.19 and 110 keV, respectively, assuming that only 10 neutrinoless double beta decay events are detected.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2020

Neutrinoless double beta decay versus other probes of heavy sterile neutrinos

We make a comparative study of the neutrinoless double beta decay constraints on heavy sterile neutrinos versus other direct and indirect constraints from both lepton number conserving and violating processes, as a sensitive probe of the extent of lepton number violation and possible interference effects in the sterile sector. We introduce a phenomenological parametrisation of the simplified one-generation seesaw model with one active and two sterile neutrino states in terms of experimentally measurable quantities, such as active-sterile neutrino mixing angles, CP phases, masses and mass splittings. This simple parametrisation enables us to analytically derive a spectrum of possible scenarios between the canonical seesaw with purely Majorana heavy neutrinos and inverse seesaw with pseudo-Dirac ones. We then go on to constrain the simplified parameters of this model from various experiments at the energy, intensity and cosmic frontiers. We emphasise that the constraints from lepton number violating processes strongly depend on the mass splitting between the two sterile states and the relative CP phase between them. This is particularly relevant for neutrinoless double beta decay, which is weakened for small mass splitting and opposite CP parities between the sterile states. On the other hand, neutrinoless double beta decay is especially sensitive for Majorana sterile neutrinos with masses around 0.1-10 GeV.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

The implication of the atomic effects in neutrinoless double beta decay

In the planned ton-scale neutrinoless double beta [Formula: see text] decay experiments, the used [Formula: see text] value is the mass-energy difference between the ground states of mother and daughter atoms, without correcting the atomic energy difference due to the alteration in the nuclear charge before and after the decay process. We show that the atomic energy change between the two ground states can potentially reduce the [Formula: see text] value by 5.502, 12.103, and 12.372 keV for the decays from [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], and [Formula: see text], respectively. The available kinetic energy for two electrons can be 2033.51 keV for [Formula: see text] decay, 2515.41 keV for [Formula: see text] decay, and 2445.45 keV for [Formula: see text] decay after correcting for atomic effects. This implies that the planned experiments could potentially miss the decay signature if a narrow energy window is designated to reduce background events including [Formula: see text] decay events.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2020

First data from the CUPID-Mo neutrinoless double beta decay experiment

The CUPID-Mo experiment is searching for neutrinoless double beta decay in $^{100}$Mo, evaluating the technology of cryogenic scintillating Li$_{2}^{100}$MoO$_4$ detectors for CUPID (CUORE Upgrade with Particle ID). CUPID-Mo detectors feature background suppression using a dual-readout scheme with Li$_{2}$MoO$_4$ crystals complemented by Ge bolometers for light detection. The detection of both heat and scintillation light signals allows the efficient discrimination of $\alpha$ from $\gamma$&$\beta$ events. In this proceedings, we discuss results from the first 2 months of data taking in spring 2019. In addition to an excellent bolometric performance of 6.7$\,$keV (FWHM) at 2615$\,$keV and an $\alpha$ separation of better than 99.9% for all detectors, we report on bulk radiopurity for Th and U. Finally, we interpret the accumulated physics data in terms of a limit of $T_{1/2}^{0\nu}\,> 3\times10^{23}\,$yr for $^{100}$Mo and discuss the sensitivity of CUPID-Mo until the expected end of physics data taking in early 2020.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Research in Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR recently concluded its search for neutrinoless double-beta decay. This technical report covers the contributions of the PI Tedeschi for the data production including the development of a run database and implementation of the file blinding scheme, as well as the analysis of the cosmic ray intensity measured by the detector veto panels.

neutrinoless double beta decay↗
DOE OSTI2020

Topological background discrimination in the PandaX-III neutrinoless double beta decay experiment

The PandaX-III experiment plans to search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0ν ββ ) of 136 Xe in the China JinPing underground Laboratory (CJPL). The experiment will use a high pressure gaseous time projection chamber (TPC) to register both the energy and the electron track topology of an event. This article is devoted to demonstrate our particular detector setup capabilities for the identification of 0ν ββ and the consequent background reduction. As software tool we use REST, a framework developed for the reconstruction and simulation of TPC-based detector systems. We study the potential for background reduction by introducing appropriate parameters based on the properties of 0ν ββ events. We exploit for the first time not only the energy density of the electron track-ends, but also the electron scattering angles produced by an electron near the end of its trajectory. To implement this, we have added new algorithms for detector signal and track processing inside REST. Their assessment shows that background can be reduced by about 7 orders of magnitude while keeping 0ν ββ efficiency above 20% for the PandaX-III baseline readout scheme, a two-dimensional 3 mm pitch stripped readout. More generally, we use the potential of REST to handle 2D/3D data to assess the impact on signal-to-background significance at different detector granularities, and to validate the PandaX-III baseline choice. Finally, we demonstrate the additional potential to discriminate surface background events generated at the readout plane in the absence of to, by making use of event parameters related with the diffusion of electrons.

Majorana↗
DOE OSTI2023

Demonstration of neutrinoless double beta decay searches in gaseous xenon with NEXT

The NEXT experiment aims at the sensitive search of the neutrinoless double beta decay in 136 Xe, using high-pressure gas electroluminescent time projection chambers. The NEXT-White detector is the first radiopure demonstrator of this technology, operated in the Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc. Achieving an energy resolution of 1% FWHM at 2.6 MeV and further background rejection by means of the topology of the reconstructed tracks, NEXT-White has been exploited beyond its original goals in order to perform a neu- trinoless double beta decay search. The analysis considers the combination of 271.6 days of 136 Xe-enriched data and 208.9 days of 136Xe-depleted data. A detailed background modeling and measurement has been developed, ensuring the time stability of the radiogenic and cosmogenic contributions across both data samples. Limits to the neutrinoless mode are obtained in two alternative analyses: a background-model-dependent approach and a novel direct background-subtraction technique, offering results with small dependence on the background model assumptions. With a fiducial mass of only 3.50 ± 0.01 kg of 136 Xe-enriched xenon, 90% C.L. lower limits to the neutrinoless double beta decay are found in the $T^{0v}_{1/2} > 5.5 \times 10^{23} - 1.3 \times 10^{24}$ yr range, depending on the method. The presented techniques stand as a proof-of-concept for the searches to be implemented with larger NEXT detectors.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2026

High-bandwidth frequency domain multiplexed readout of transition-edge sensors for neutrinoless double beta decay searches

The next-generation of cryogenic neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments require increasingly fast readout in order to improve background discrimination. These experiments, operated as cryogenic calorimeters at ∼ 10 mK, are usually read out by high-impedance neutron transmutation doped (NTD) thermistors, which provide good energy resolution, but are limited by ∼ 1 ms response times. Superconducting detectors, such as transition-edge sensors (TESs) with a time resolution of ∼ 100 μs, offer superior timing performance over NTD semiconductor bolometers. To make this technology viable for an application to a thousand or more channels, multiplexed readout is necessary in order to minimize the thermal load and radioactive contamination induced by the readout. Frequency-domain multiplexing readout (fMUX) for TESs, previously developed at Berkeley Lab and McGill University, is currently in use for mm-wave telescopes with detector sampling rates in the order of 100 Hz. We demonstrate a new readout system, based on the McGill/Berkeley digital fMux readout, to satisfy the higher bandwidth and noise requirements of the next generation of TES-instrumented cryogenic calorimeters. Each multiplexing readout module comprises 10 superconducting resonators in the 1–5 MHz range and a DC superconducting quantum interference device (DC-SQUID), interfaced to high-speed field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based electronics for digital signal processing and low-latency SQUID feedback. The new readout samples detectors at 156 kHz, three orders of magnitude faster than its cosmology-oriented predecessor, and demonstrates a stable feedback bandwidth of 3 kHz in a real TES-based system.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

First demonstration of a TES based cryogenic Li 2 MoO 4 detector for neutrinoless double beta decay search

Cryogenic calorimetric experiments to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay (0vββ) are highly competitive, scalable and versatile in isotope. The largest planned detector array, CUPID, is comprised of about 1500 individual Li 2 100 MoO 4 detector modules with a further scale up envisioned for a follow up experiment (CUPID-1T). In this article, we present a novel detector concept targeting this second stage with a low impedance TES based readout for the Li 2 MoO 4 absorber that is easily mass-produced and lends itself to a multiplexed readout. We present the detector design and results from a first prototype detector operated at the NEXUS shallow underground facility at Fermilab. The detector is a 2-cm-side cube with 21 g mass that is strongly thermally coupled to its readout chip to allow rise-times of ~0.5 ms. This design is more than one order of magnitude faster than present NTD based detectors and is hence expected to effectively mitigate backgrounds generated through the pile-up of two independent two neutrino decay events coinciding close in time. Together with a baseline resolution of 1.95 keV (FWHM) these performance parameters extrapolate to a background index from pile-up as low as 5 • 10 –6 counts/keV/kg/yr in CUPID size crystals. The detector was calibrated up to the MeV region showing sufficient dynamic range for 0vββ searches. In combination with a SuperCDMS HVeV detector this setup also allowed us to perform a precision measurement of the scintillation time constants of Li 2 MoO 4 , which showed a primary component with a fast O(20 μs) time scale. Similar content being viewe

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

CUPID: The Next-Generation Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Experiment

We report CUPID is a next-generation tonne-scale bolometric neutrinoless double beta decay experiment that will probe the Majorana nature of neutrinos and discover lepton number violation in case of observation of this singular process. CUPID will be built on experience, expertise and lessons learned in CUORE and will be installed in the current CUORE infra-structure in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory. The CUPID detector technology, successfully tested in the CUPID-Mo experiment, is based on scintillating bolometers of Li 2 MoO 4 enriched in the isotope of interest 100 Mo. In order to achieve its ambitious science goals, the CUPID collaboration aims to reduce the backgrounds in the region of interest by a factor 100 with respect to CUORE. This performance will be achieved by introducing the high efficient α/β discrimination demonstrated by the CUPID-0 and CUPID-Mo experiments, and using a high transition energy double beta decay nucleus such as 100 Mo to minimize the impact of the gamma background. CUPID will consist of about 1500 hybrid heat-light detectors for a total isotope mass of 250 kg. The CUPID scientific reach is supported by a detailed and safe background model based on CUORE, CUPID-Mo and CUPID-0 results. The required performances have already been demonstrated and will be presented.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Early Career Award: Single Molecule Fluorescence Imaging for a Background-Free Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Search

This project aimed to develop a suite of novel technologies targeted at detecting individual barium ions produced in neutrinoless double beta decays of 136 Xe, as part of the NEXT program of gaseous xenon detectors. We realized novel molecules which could sense Ba 2+ ions in dry conditions; new microscopy techniques operable in dry noble gases, including the required operating conditions of xenon at 10 bar pressure; and new radiofrequency ion transport methods (developed both theoretically and experimentally) that can transport ions in dense xenon gas. Together, these developments represent a major advance toward a background-free neutrinoless double beta decay experiment based on single molecule fluorescence imaging of Ba 2+ daughter ions.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗