Neutrinoless double- $\beta$ decay in effective field theory: The light-Majorana neutrino-exchange mechanism

Journal Article · 11 June 2018 · Physical Review C

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.97.065501 · OSTI ID:1441110

Cirigliano, Vincenzo ^[1]; Dekens, Wouter ^[1]; Mereghetti, Emanuele ^[1]; Walker-Loud, Andre ^[2]

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1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

We present the first chiral effective theory derivation of the neutrinoless double-β decay nn→pp potential induced by light Majorana neutrino exchange. The effective-field-theory framework has allowed us to identify and parametrize short- and long-range contributions previously missed in the literature. These contributions cannot be absorbed into parametrizations of the single-nucleon form factors. Starting from the quark and gluon level, we perform the matching onto chiral effective field theory and subsequently onto the nuclear potential. To derive the nuclear potential mediating neutrinoless double-β decay, the hard, soft, and potential neutrino modes must be integrated out. This is performed through next-to-next-to-leading order in the chiral power counting, in both the Weinberg and pionless schemes. At next-to-next-to-leading order, the amplitude receives additional contributions from the exchange of ultrasoft neutrinos, which can be expressed in terms of nuclear matrix elements of the weak current and excitation energies of the intermediate nucleus. These quantities also control the two-neutrino double-β decay amplitude. Finally, we outline strategies to determine the low-energy constants that appear in the potentials, by relating them to electromagnetic couplings and/or by matching to lattice QCD calculations.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231; AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1441110
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1461170; OSTI ID: 1477716
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-17-28401; PRVCAN; ark:/13030/qt39b399gb; TRN: US1901977
• Journal Information: Physical Review C, Vol. 97, Issue 6; Related Information: © 2018 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP 3 .; ISSN 2469-9985
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English