NPA Seminar, Tereza Kroupová, University of Pennsylvania, “Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay and the SNO+ Experiment”

One of the biggest questions in fundamental particle physics is whether neutrinos are Dirac fermions, with distinct anti-particles, or Majorana fermions, for which the particles and anti-particles are identical. The best available probe of the neutrino nature is neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ), a hypothetical process that require massive Majorana neutrinos. This discovery of this lepton number violating process would therefore reveal the neutrino nature and provide a window into physics beyond the Standard Model.
SNO+ is a kilo-tonne scale low background neutrino detector with the primary goal of searching for 0νββ in tellurium-130. The experiment’s target volume is currently filled with liquid scintillator, providing the scope for background characterisation as well as measurement of reactor, geo, and low-energy solar neutrinos. The scintillator will be loaded with natural tellurium in order to search for 0νββ. In this seminar, I will give an overview of the SNO+ experiment and explain the strategies SNO+ will employ in its 0νββ search.