Speaker
Description
Neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay offers a means to explore whether neutrinos are massive Majorana fermions, i.e., their own antiparticles, and thus a portal between matter and antimatter. The EXO-200 experiment operated between 2011 and 2018 at the WIPP underground site in New Mexico, USA, setting some of the strongest constraints on the existence of this decay in 136Xe. EXO-200 was a single-phase liquid xenon time projection chamber (LXe TPC) and used 200 kg of isotopically enriched liquid xenon (LXe) with 80% 136Xe and 20% 134Xe. 134Xe, another double beta emitter with a Q energy of 825 keV, provides an opportunity to search for 0νββ decay with a second isotope of the same element within one detector, which allows to reduce uncertainties on the ratio of the decay probabilities. We present a search for double beta decay modes of 134Xe with the EXO-200 Phase II dataset (2016-2018) featuring improved sensitivity with respect to a similar study performed with the Phase I run.
With several next-generation liquid-xenon based rare event search detectors on the horizon, exciting new possibilities come within reach to discover double beta decay of 134Xe, which will be discussed along with the presented results from EXO-200.
| Submitter Name | Thomas Brunner |
|---|---|
| Submitter Email | thomas.brunner@mcgill.ca |
| Submitter Institution | McGill University |
