Speaker
Description
The neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay, if observed, has important impli-
cations on particle physics, cosmology and fundamental physics. In particular it
can give access to the effective neutrino mass. In order to extract such informa-
tion from the 0νββ-decay half-life measurement, the knowledge of the Nuclear
Matrix Elements (NME) is of utmost importance. In this context the NUMEN
and the NURE projects aim to extract information on the NME by measuring
the Double Charge Exchange (DCE) reaction cross section in selected systems
of interest for the 0νββ-decay.
Early studies with heavy-ions DCE reactions performed in the 80’s and 90’s
were not conclusive because of the experimental difficulties that have to be faced
in such kind of measurements, like to obtain very forward-angle data, the very
low cross section of the process to be measured, the requirement of a high energy
resolution and, eventually, the unambiguous identification of the DCE reaction
from other competing processes.
All these requirements can be met by the large-acceptance spectrometer
MAGNEX, present at INFN-LNS, Catania. Its high energy and angular res-
olution and its large acceptance make MAGNEX a tool that can achieve the
measurements of the DCE cross-sections in the zero-degree region.
An experimental campaign focused on DCE reactions involving the nuclei
of interest for 0νββ-decay has already begun. Recent results concerning the
(20Ne, 20O) DCE reaction at 15 AMeV, on 116Cd and 130Te targets will be
shown and discussed.
