High Energy Seminar
Speaker: Lisa Kaufman, SLAC
Title: The Search for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay with 136Xe: EXO-200 Results and a Look to the Future with nEXO
Host: Svoboda
Room: 285
Abstract:
Large ultra-low background liquid xenon (LXe) detectors have recently emerged as a promising technology that can push the neutrinoless double beta decay search to unprecedented sensitivity. The study of neutrinoless double beta decay will shed light on the properties of neutrino mass and whether or not the neutrino is its own antiparticle. A discovery would mean that lepton number is violated and leads the way to physics beyond the Standard Model. The Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO) program is aimed at searching for this decay in 136Xe with a liquid xenon time projection chamber. This talk will discuss new results from the present experiment EXO-200 and prospects for a next-generation experiment called nEXO that will be capable of probing Majorana neutrino mass in the inverted mass hierarchy region.
