Ettore Majorana (1906--1938) disappeared while traveling by ship from Palermo to Naples in 1938. His fate has never been fully resolved and several articles have been written that explore the mystery itself. His demise intrigues us still today because of his seminal work, published the previous year, that established symmetric solutions to the Dirac equation that describe a fermionic particle that is its own antiparticle. This work has long had a significant impact in neutrino physics, where this fundamental question regarding the particle remains unanswered. But the formalism he developed has found many uses as there are now a number of candidate spin-$1/2$ neutral particles that may be truly neutral with no quantum number to distinguish them from their antiparticles. If such particles exist, they will influence many areas of nuclear and particle physics. Most notably the process of neutrinoless double beta decay can exist only if neutrinos are massive Majorana particles. Hence, many efforts to search for this process are underway. Majorana's influence does not stop with particle physics, however, even though that was his original consideration. The equations he derived also arise in solid-state physics where they describe electronic states in materials with superconducting order. Of special interest here is the class of solutions of the Majorana equation in one and two spatial dimensions at exactly zero energy. These Majorana zero modes are endowed with some remarkable physical properties that may lead to advances in quantum computing and, in fact, there is evidence that they have been experimentally observed. This Colloquium first summarizes the basics of Majorana's theory and its implications. It then provides an overview of the rich experimental programs trying to find a fermion that is its own antiparticle in nuclear, particle, and solid-state physics.

Colloquium : Majorana fermions in nuclear, particle, and solid-state physics

The discovery of neutrino masses through the observation of oscillations boosted the importance of neutrinoless double beta decay (). In this paper, we review the main features of this process, underlining its key role from both the experimental and theoretical point of view. In particular, we contextualize the in the panorama of lepton number violating processes, also assessing some possible particle physics mechanisms mediating the process. Since the existence is correlated with neutrino masses, we also review the state of the art of the theoretical understanding of neutrino masses. In the final part, the status of current experiments is presented and the prospects for the future hunt for are discussed. Also, experimental data coming from cosmological surveys are considered and their impact on expectations is examined.

/pdf/neutrinoless-double-beta-decay-2015-review-3iw4l9ikse.pdf

Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay: 2015 Review

The observation of neutrinoless double beta decay (DBD) will have important consequences. First it will signal that lepton number is not conserved and the neutrinos are Majorana particles. Second, it represents our best hope for determining the absolute neutrino mass scale at the level of a few tens of meV. To achieve the last goal, however, certain hurdles have to be overcome involving particle, nuclear and experimental physics. Particle physics is important since it provides the mechanisms for neutrinoless DBD. In this review, we emphasize the light neutrino mass mechanism. Nuclear physics is important for extracting the useful information from the data. One must accurately evaluate the relevant nuclear matrix elements (NMEs), a formidable task. To this end, we review the recently developed sophisticated nuclear structure approaches, employing different methods and techniques of calculation. We also examine the question of quenching of the axial vector coupling constant, which may have important consequences on the size of the NMEs. From an experimental point of view it is challenging, since the life times are extremely long and one has to fight against formidable backgrounds. One needs large isotopically enriched sources and detectors with good energy resolution and very low background.

Neutrinoless double beta decay and neutrino mass

We estimate constraints on the existence of a heavy, mostly sterile neutrino with mass between 10 eV and 1 TeV. We improve upon previous analyses by performing a global combination and expanding the experimental inputs to simultaneously include tests for lepton universality, lepton-flavor-violating processes, electroweak precision data, dipole moments, and neutrinoless double beta decay. Assuming the heavy neutrino and its decay products are invisible to detection, we further include, in a self-consistent manner, constraints from direct kinematic searches, the kinematics of muon decay, cosmology, and neutrino oscillations, in order to estimate constraints on the values of $|U_{e4}|^2$, $|U_{\mu4}|^2$, and $|U_{\tau4}|^2$.

Global Constraints on a Heavy Neutrino

Aboveground test of an advanced Li2MoO4 scintillating bolometer to search for neutrinoless double beta decay of 100Mo

We report the results of a search for the neutrinoless double-$\beta$ decay (0$\nu\beta\beta$) of $^{100}$Mo, using the NEMO-3 detector to reconstruct the full topology of the final state events. With an exposure of 34.7 kg.y, no evidence for the 0$\nu\beta\beta$ signal has been found, yielding a limit for the light Majorana neutrino mass mechanism of $T_{1/2}(0\nu\beta\beta)>1.1 \times 10^{24}$ years (90% C.L.) once both statistical and systematic uncertainties are taken into account. Depending on the Nuclear Matrix Elements this corresponds to an upper limit on the Majorana effective neutrino mass of $ < 0.3-0.8$ eV (90% C.L.). Constraints on other lepton number violating mechanisms of 0$\nu\beta\beta$ decays are also given. Searching for high-energy double electron events in all suitable sources of the detector, no event in the energy region [3.2-10] MeV is observed for an exposure of 47 kg.y.

pdf/search-for-neutrinoless-double-beta-decay-of-100-mo-with-the-3yju2sn0vy.pdf

Search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of $^{100}Mo$ with the NEMO-3 detector

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

F. Nowacki

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of $^{100}Mo$ with the NEMO-3 detector