Recent results on heavy-ion direct reactions of interest for 0νββ decay at INFN - LNS

M Cavallaro ,A Pakou ,D Gambacurta ,M Fisichella ,A Spatafora ,G De Geronimo ,E Santopinto ,S Tudisco ,L Campajola ,L E Charon Garcia ,A Hacisalihoglu ,L Serbina ,G Lanzalone ,F Pinna ,Carlo Ferraresi ,J Ferretti ,F Iazzi ,G A Souliotis ,R Bijker ,H Lenske ,F Delaunay ,M Cutuli ,P Ries ,J Kotila ,R.b.b Santos ,J L Ferreira ,Elisa Maria Gandolfo ,J Wang ,J Ma ,Salvatore Calabrese ,M Moralles ,D R Mendes ,V Soukeras ,Francesco La Via ,F Cappuzzello ,S Burrello ,L Neri ,H Djapo ,V Werner ,J Barea ,R Neveling ,M A G Silveira ,A Yildirin ,Y Y Yang ,H Jivan ,V Capirossi ,H Petrascu ,P Finocchiaro ,David Córdoba García ,R Chen ,H García-Tecocoatzi ,D Torresi ,M Colonna ,J Ruíz ,T Borello‐Lewin ,G A Brischetto ,S Firat ,C Agodi ,Canel Eke ,C Altana ,L Acosta ,N Deshmukh ,A Foti ,N Auerbach ,O Sgouros ,L La Fauci ,E.r Chávez Lomelí ,R.i.m Vsevolodovna ,H Vargas Hernandez ,K De Los Ríos ,J A Lay ,Y Kucuk ,Vincenzo Branchina ,I Ciraldo ,G Russo ,L Pellegri ,I Boztosun ,P Mereu ,P Adsley ,S Reito ,O Brunasso ,S Brasolin ,L Calabretta ,A Huerta-Hernandez ,D Calvo ,L Pandola ,N H Medina ,J Lubián ,S O Solakcı ,D Carbone ,D.j Marín-Lámbarri ,A Russo ,P Amador-Valenzuela ,J Bellone ,J R B Oliveira ,R Linares ,Grazia D’agostino ,N Pietralla ,V A B Zagatto

doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1610/1/012004

Abstract

Neutrinoless double beta decay of nuclei, if observed, would have important implications on fundamental physics. In particular it would give access to the effective neutrino mass. In order to extract such information from 0νββ decay half-life measurements, the knowledge of the Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME) is of utmost importance. In this context the NUMEN and the NURE projects aim to extract information on the NME by measuring cross sections of Double Charge Exchange reactions in selected systems which are expected to spontaneously decay via 0νββ. In this work an overview of the experimental challenges that NUMEN is facing in order to perform the experiments with accelerated beams and the research and development activity for the planned upgrade of the INFN-LNS facilities is reported.

Highlights

Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) of atomic nuclei is a predicted but still unobserved spontaneous decay which is attracting a deep interest in the physics community
The beam components characterized by charge states lower than 10+, mainly 20Ne9+ and 20Ne8+, produced by the interaction of the beam with the electrons of the target material, have a magnetic rigidity which is similar to the ions of interest
A systematic study of heavy-ion induced double charge exchange reactions and of the other reaction channels characterized by the same projectile and target is in progress at INFN-LNS

Summary

Introduction

Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) of atomic nuclei is a predicted but still unobserved spontaneous decay which is attracting a deep interest in the physics community. The main reason is that its observation would establish the Majorana nature of neutrino and would shed light on the absolute neutrino mass and hierarchy This phenomenon could provide precious information to interpret key problems of fundamental physics as the unification of the fundamental forces and the matter-antimatter balance in the Universe [1]. A critical aspect of 0νββ physics is associated to the determination of the Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME) entering in the expression of the decay half-life. These quantities must be known with good accuracy, despite the intrinsic many-body nature of the parent and daughter nuclei makes this task hard. Experimentally driven inputs relevant to understand the 0νββ responses are useful to help evaluate the 0νββ NMEs and to constrain the existing calculations

Methods

Conclusion