2019/10/16 by J. Martín-Albo, Martín-Albo, Justo · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1910.07314
openalex publication_date 2019/10/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon TPC (NEXT) seeks to discover the neutrinoless double beta (ββ0ν) decay of 136Xe using a high-pressure xenon gas time projection chamber with electroluminescent amplification. The observation of ββ0ν decay would prove that neutrinos are Majorana particles and that lepton number is not conserved. The NEXT detector concept offers several features of great value for ββ0ν-decay searches, including excellent energy resolution, tracking for the active suppression of backgrounds and scalability to large source masses. The initial phase of the NEXT project (2009-2014) was devoted to R&D with two prototypes (DEMO and DBDM) of approximately 1 kg of active xenon mass that demonstrated the performance of the detector concept. During the second phase of the project (2015-2019), the NEXT Collaboration has operated underground at the Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc, in Spain, a radio-pure detector of about 5 kg of xenon mass. The goal of the current phase is the construction, commissioning and operation of the NEXT-100 detector, with a predicted sensitivity to the ββ0ν decay half-life of 6×1025 years (90% CL) after a run of 3 years. The Collaboration is planning as well a future tonne-scale phase to explore ββ0ν-decay half-lives beyond 1026 years.