2012/10/09 by P. Finnerty, Finnerty, P., E. Aguayo +163
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Neutrino Physics Research #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Particle accelerators and beam dynamics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1210.2678
openalex publication_date 2012/10/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR will search for the neutrinoless double-beta decay of the 76Ge isotope with a mixed array of enriched and natural germanium detectors. The observation of this rare decay would indicate the neutrino is its own anti-particle, demonstrate that lepton number is not conserved, and provide information on the absolute mass-scale of the neutrino. The DEMONSTRATOR is being assembled at the 4850 foot level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. The array will be contained in a low-background environment and surrounded by passive and active shielding. The goals for the DEMONSTRATOR are: demonstrating a background rate less than 3 t-1 y-1 in the 4 keV region of interest (ROI) surrounding the 2039 keV 76Ge endpoint energy; establishing the technology required to build a tonne-scale germanium based double-beta decay experiment; testing the recent claim of observation of neutrinoless double-beta decay [H. V. Klapdor-Kleingrothaus and I. V. Krivosheina, Mod. Phys. Lett. A21, 1547 (2006)]; and performing a direct search for light WIMPs (3-10 GeV).