Status Update of the Majorana Demonstrator Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Experiment

Technical Report · Tue Nov 10 00:00:00 EST 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1225586· OSTI ID:1225586

Gruzko, Julieta ^[1]; Rielage, Keith Robert ^[2]; Xu, Wenqin ^[2]; Elliott, Steven Ray ^[2]; Massarczyk, Ralph ^[2]; Goett, John Jerome III ^[2]; Chu, Pinghan ^[2]

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1. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Neutrinoless double beta decay searches play a major role in determining neutrino properties, in particular the Majorana or Dirac nature of the neutrino and the absolute scale of the neutrino mass. The consequences of these searches go beyond neutrino physics, with implications for Grand Unification and leptogenesis. The Majorana Collaboration is assembling a low-background array of high purity Germanium (HPGe) detectors to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay in ⁷⁶Ge. The Majorana Demonstrator, which is currently being constructed and commissioned at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, will contain 44 kg (30 kg enriched in ⁷⁶Ge) of HPGe detectors. Its primary goal is to demonstrate the scalability and background required for a tonne-scale Ge experiment. This is accomplished via a modular design and projected background of less than 3 cnts/tonne-yr in the region of interest. The experiment is currently taking data with the first of its enriched detectors.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1225586
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-15-28761; TRN: US1500847
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
DOUBLE BETA DECAY
HIGH-PURITY GE DETECTORS
NEUTRINOS
GERMANIUM 76
GRAND UNIFIED THEORY
GERMANIUM
UNDERGROUND
PARTICLE PRODUCTION
MODULAR STRUCTURES
BACKGROUND RADIATION
MASS
Atomic and Nuclear Physics