Speaker
Michael Marino
(University of Washington)
Description
The observation of neutrinoless double-beta decay would establish that the
neutrino is a Majorana particle, would help determine the absolute mass scale
of the neutrino, and could provide insight into understanding
lepton-number-violating processes. The Majorana Collaboration plans to search
for this process in 76Ge using high-purity germanium detectors in an
ultra-low-background environment. The experiment will proceed in a phased
approach with the eventual goal to scale to a 1-tonne experiment. The first
phase, the Majorana Demonstrator, will deploy 60 kg of detectors to test the
Klapdor-Kleingrothaus result (Modern Physics Letters A, Vol. 21, No. 20 (2006)1547-1566) and to establish backgrounds low enough to enable scaling to 1 tonne
(1 count/tonne-year in the double-beta decay region of interest). Achieving
this background goal is being addressed with efforts including low-mass
front-end electronics development, copper electroforming, and low-capacitance,
low-noise detector development. This presentation will provide an outline of
the experiment and an update on current status.
Author
Michael Marino
(University of Washington)
