Speaker
Description
The physics of neutrinoless double beta decay has tremendous implications on particle physics, cosmology and fundamental physics. In particular, the nuclear matrix elements entering in the expression of the half-life of this process play a crucial role.
The possibility to use heavy-ion induced reactions and in particular double charge exchange reactions as tools for extracting information on matrix elements will be presented at the conference. The basic point is that the initial and final state wave functions in the two processes are the same and the transition operators are similar. The strengths and the limits of the proposed methodology will be discussed. The experimental difficulties that limited in the past the exploration of such kind of reactions and the advantages of using the MAGNEX large acceptance spectrometer at INFN - LNS (Italy) will be stressed.
New experimental data regarding the 40Ca(18O,18Ne)40Ar and 116Cd(20Ne,20O)116Sn double charge exchange reactions and competing channels involving same projectiles and targets at 15 MeV/u incident energy will be shown.
