Abstract:
Recent results from neutrino oscillation experiments point to neutrino
masses which suggest that neutrinoless double beta decay might be
observable in a sufficiently large experiment. An R&D program is
underway to study the use of the isotope Xenon (136) in such a
search. The chemical- and radio-purity attainable with xenon, and the
good energy resolution in xenon as a detection medium, make this
element an attractive candidate. In addition, a novel decay-daughter
tagging method is under study that would allow for coincident
detection and lead to the dramatically reduced backgrounds required to
make a large scale (>1 ton) search feasible.
