Speaker
Caio Licciardi
(nEXO)
Description
The EXO-200 experiment has made both the first observation and the most precisely measured half-life of any double-beta decay to date, as well as already provided one of the most sensitive searches for the neutrino-less mode of this decay (0vbb). It consists of an extremely low background time projection chamber containing ~150 kg of enriched liquid Xe-136. Using the first two years of data, EXO-200 has been producing various physics results including a lower limit on the 0vbb half-life of 1.1x10^{25} years at a confidence level of 90%, stringent limits to searches for exotic physics, such as the emission of Majoron particles, and to the double-beta decay to the excited state of the daughter nucleus Ba-136, as well as detailed studies of the backgrounds and the mobility of ions in liquid xenon. The experiment has experienced a brief hiatus in operations during a temporary shutdown of its host facility, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, but has already restarted data taking. This talk will cover the main analyses of the EXO-200 data, an update on the current status of the detector and a brief overview of the nEXO experiment, a 5-tonne detector designed as part of the next generation of searches for 0vbb.
