Speaker
Description
The discovery of the lepton-number-violating neutrinoless double-beta decay process will prove that neutrinos are Majorana fermions. The Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless double-beta Decay (LEGEND) project will search for this decay in $^{76}$Ge. In its first phase — LEGEND-200 — 200~kg of $^{76}$Ge-enriched high-purity germanium detectors will be deployed in a liquid-argon cryostat. It is under construction at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy. The first phase has a background goal of $< 0.6$ counts/(FWHM t y), which yields a $3\sigma$ half-life discovery sensitivity beyond $10^{27}$ years. The second phase — LEGEND-1000 — will comprise 1000 kg of enriched germanium detectors. It will be sited deep underground with SNOLAB as the preferred host. LEGEND-1000 will have a discovery sensitivity beyond $10^{28}$ years. In this talk, I will give an overview of the LEGEND project.
