Speaker
Jose Angel Hernando Morata
(Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (ES))
Description
NEXT is an experimental program to search for neutrino double beta decay events using a High Pressure Gas Xenon Chamber with electroluminescence readout. The first phase of the experiment will use 100 kg of Xenon gas enriched to 91% in the 136Xe isotope. NEXT-100 is currently under construction at Canfranc Underground Laboratory (Spain). The detector is an asymmetric time projection chamber with a plane of PMTs and a tracking plane of SiPMs located after an Electro-Luminiscence grid. It boasts an excellent energy resolution, 0-5--0.7% FWHM at the Q value of the 136Xe, and event topological information to identify signal and background. The status of the project, as well as the results obtained with NEXT large EL prototypes (NEXT-DBDM and NEXT-DEMO) will be presented, as well as the prospects to extrapolate the technique to the ton scale.
Authors
Jose Angel Hernando Morata
(Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (ES))
Juan Jose Gomez Cadenas
(Universidad de Valencia (ES))
