Half Day IoP Meeting: Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

Wednesday 12 Oct 2011, 12:00 → 18:35 Europe/London

Chandler B01 (University College London)

Neutrinoless double beta decay is a crucial process to search for the violation of lepton number and a highly sensitive probe of the yet unknown absolute mass of light neutrinos. Its observation would have far reaching consequences for BSM physics.

This meeting is intended to give an overview of (1) the experimental status and future prospects of searches for neutrinoless double beta decay; (2) the status and progress in the determination of nuclear matrix elements; (3) and the theoretical aspects and developments of relevant models of lepton number violation.

The meeting will bring together experts in experimental and theoretical neutrino, nuclear and BSM physics, with talks targeted at the general high energy physics audience. Plenty of time for discussions will be provided.

The meeting starts at 13:00. Lunch will be served from 12:00.

Organizers:
Frank Deppisch (UCL)
Silvia Pascoli (IPPP)
Ruben Saakyan (UCL)
Stefan Söldner-Rembold (Manchester U.)
David Waters (UCL)

The meeting is supported by the IOP and partially funded by the IPPP.

12:00 Lunch

1 Welcome

2 Neutrinos and DBD

Speaker: Jacobo Lopez-Pavon

Slides 01_Lopez-Pavon.pdf

3 Beyond the Standard Model and DBD

Speaker: Martin Hirsch

Slides 02_Hirsch.pdf

4 DBD Experiments

Speaker: Yorck Ramachers

Slides 03_Ramachers.pdf 03_Ramachers.ppt

5 Neutrino Mass Bounds from Astrophysics

Speaker: Ofer Lahav

Slides 04_Lahav.pdf

15:30 Coffee Break

6 Nuclear Matrix Element Calculations

Speaker: Vadim Rodin

Slides 05_Rodin.pdf

7 Experimental Input for Nuclear Matrix Elements

If neutrinoless double beta decay were to be observed, its half life would provide a determination of the effective neutrino mass as long as the nuclear matrix element can be determined. These matrix elements are not directly sampled by any other physical process and their values, which are by necessity taken from theoretical calculations, are rather uncertain. However, various elements of these calculations can be benchmarked against measureable nuclear properties. Using the 76Ge➞76Se system, we have determined the occupancy of protons and neutrons in the ‘active orbitals’ of the respective 0+ ground states, and the difference between them, thus characterising the ground-state wave functions. The Fermi surface was found to be more diffuse than previous calculations suggested. Pairing properties have also been studied to test the validity of the BCS approximation used in QRPA, one of the major theoretical approaches to calculating the matrix elements. We are continuing this programme by studies of the 130Te➞130Xe and 100Mo➞100Ru systems, where each presents a different experimental challenge. An overview of the programme and its impact will be discussed.

Speaker: Benjamin Kay

Slides 06_Kay.pdf

8 The GERDA Experiment

Speaker: Grzegorz Zuzel

Slides 07_Zuzel.pdf 07_Zuzel.ppt

9 The SNO+ Experiment

Speaker: Gwen Lefeuvre

Slides 08_Lefeuvre_SNOplus.pdf

10 The NEMO and SuperNEMO Experiments

Speaker: Stefano Torre

Slides 09_Torre.pdf 09_Torre.ppt

11 Adjourn