Description
Authors: LEGEND Collaboration, Aparajita Mazumdar
Presenter: Aparajita Mazumdar
Abstract: Whether neutrinos are Majorana or Dirac in nature is an important open question in modern particle physics, which could provide insight on the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. The observation of Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (0νββ), a hypothesized Beyond Standard Model decay, would conclusively establish the Majorana nature of neutrinos and demonstrate lepton number violation. The search can also constrain the absolute mass scale of the neutrinos.
The LEGEND experimental program aims to have an ultimate discovery sensitivity to a 0νββ half- life beyond 1028 years for 76Ge, which improves upon the current limits by approximately 2 orders of magnitude. Currently, the first phase of the experiment, LEGEND-200 has acquired a year of stable data with 142 kg of enriched germanium detectors. In this talk, we’ll discuss the performance, first results and current status of LEGEND-200. We’ll also briefly discuss the status of the next phase of the experimental program, LEGEND-1000.
This work is supported by the U.S. DOE, and the NSF, the LANL, ORNL and LBNL LDRD programs; the European ERC and Horizon programs; the German DFG, BMBF, and MPG; the Italian INFN; the Polish NCN and MNiSW; the Czech MEYS; the Slovak RDA; the Swiss SNF; the UK STFC; the Canadian NSERC and CFI; the LNGS and SURF facilities.
