Description
Finding evidence of neutrinoless double beta decay would reveal the Majorana nature of the neutrino and give insight into the origins of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, the smallness of neutrino mass, and the symmetry structure of the Standard Model. The NEXT collaboration is developing a sequence of high pressure xenon gas time projection chambers with the aim of creating a ton-scale, very low background neutrinoless double beta decay search. Co-developed by UTA and ANL, NEXT-CRAB (Camera Readout And Barium tagging) will demonstrate new designs that enable scaling NEXT beyond the ton scale and ultimately provide a background free signal, enabling measurements that probe the normal neutrino mass ordering. To do this we are employing several novel techniques, one of which is using direct VUV imaging of the electroluminescence with a TimePix3 camera. To increase background rejection capabilities, novel techniques have been developed to distinguish each time the daughter nucleus of double beta decay, a barium ion, is within the detector volume. Within the detector, the only source of Ba++ is through double beta decay and therefore once identified it can be linked directly to the event, suppressing all anticipated radiological backgrounds.
| Collaboration | NEXT |
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