Speaker
Description
The discovery of neutrinoless double beta decay would establish neutrinos as Majorana fermions and imply a violation of lepton number conservation. The leading experiment based on $^{76}$Ge is GERDA, which operates a 36\,kg array of germanium detectors, enriched in $^{76}$Ge directly immersed in liquid argon. The argon acts a a coolant and active shield against background radiation due to its scintillating capabilities. GERDA was the first experiment in the field to reach a half-life sensitivity of $10^{26}$\,yr, and it will take data until the end of 2019. Its successor is LEGEND-200, which will operate about 200\,kg of enriched $^{76}$Ge-detectors in liquid argon at LNGS. We will present the latest results of GERDA and plans for LEGEND-200 and beyond.
