Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Aprile, E.
• Aalbers, Jelle
• Agostini, F.
• Althueser, L.
• Amaro, F. D.
• Anthony, M.
• Antochi, Vasile Cristian
• Arneodo, F.
• Bauermeister, Boris
• Breur, P. A.
• Brown, A.
• Brown, E.
• Capelli, C.
• Cichon, D.
• Colijn, A. P.
• Conrad, Jan
• Cussonneau, J. P.
• Decowski, M. P.
• de Perio, P.
• Di Gangi, P.
• Di Giovanni, A.
• Elykov, A.
• Eurin, G.
• Fei, J.
• Fulgione, W.
• Rosso, A. Gallo
• Galloway, M.
• Gao, F.
• Garbini, M.
• Grandi, L.
• Greene, Z.
• Hasterok, C.
• Hogenbirk, E.
• Itay, R.
• Joerg, F.
• Kaminsky, B.
• Kazama, S.
• Kish, A.
• Koltman, G.
• Kopec, A.
• Lang, R. F.
• Levinson, L.
• Lindemann, S.
• Lindner, M.
• Lombardi, F.
• Fune, E. Lopez
• Macolino, C.
• Mahlstedt, Jörn
• Manfredini, A.
• Marignetti, F.
• Undagoitia, T. Marrodan
• Masson, D.
• Mastroianni, S.
• Messina, M.
• Miller, K.
• Molinario, A.
• Morå, Knut
• Murra, M.
• Naganoma, J.
• Oberlack, U.
• Odgers, K.
• Peres, R.
• Piastra, F.
• Pienaar, J.
• Pizzella, V.
• Priel, N.
• Qiu, H.
• Riedel, B.
• Rizzo, A.
• Rupp, N.
• dos Santos, J. M. F.
• Sartorelli, G.
• Sarcevic, N.
• Scheibelhut, M.
• Schindler, S.
• Schreiner, J.
• Schulte, D.
• Schumann, M.
• Selvi, M.
• Shagin, P.
• Shockley, E.
• Silva, M.
• Simgen, H.
• Therreau, C.
• Thers, D.
• Toschi, F.
• Trinchero, G.
• Tunnell, C.
• Upole, N.
• Vargas, M.
• Wack, O.
• Wang, H.
• Wei, Y.
• Weinheimer, C.
• Wittweg, C.
• Wulf, J.
• Ye, J.
• Zhang, Y.
• Zhu, T.
• Zopounidis, J. P.

Titel

Observation of two-neutrino double electron capture in 124 Xe with XENON1T

Ist Teil von

• Nature (London), 2019-04, Vol.568 (7753), p.532

Ort / Verlag

England

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Two-neutrino double electron capture (2νECEC) is a second-order weak-interaction process with a predicted half-life that surpasses the age of the Universe by many orders of magnitude . Until now, indications of 2νECEC decays have only been seen for two isotopes , Kr and Ba, and instruments with very low background levels are needed to detect them directly with high statistical significance . The 2νECEC half-life is an important observable for nuclear structure models and its measurement represents a meaningful step in the search for neutrinoless double electron capture-the detection of which would establish the Majorana nature of the neutrino and would give access to the absolute neutrino mass . Here we report the direct observation of 2νECEC in Xe with the XENON1T dark-matter detector. The significance of the signal is 4.4 standard deviations and the corresponding half-life of 1.8 × 10  years (statistical uncertainty, 0.5 × 10  years; systematic uncertainty, 0.1 × 10  years) is the longest measured directly so far. This study demonstrates that the low background and large target mass of xenon-based dark-matter detectors make them well suited for measuring rare processes and highlights the broad physics reach of larger next-generation experiments .