Search for double β-decays of 124Xe with XENON100 & XENON1T

Abstract

The rare nuclear process of two-neutrino double electron capture, where two electrons are simultaneously captured from the atomic shell, has not yet been observed for 124Xe. A detection of this decay would provide a new reference for nuclear matrix element calculations. Moreover, if a neutrinoless mode were discovered, it would prove a Majorana nature of neutrinos and would shed light on the effective neutrino mass. The XENON dark matter project, with its dual-phase xenon time projection chambers XENON100 and XENON1T, is well suited for this rare event searches with signatures in the keV-region. The search with the XENON100 detector, containing 29 g of 124Xe, is explained as well as the outlook of its successor XENON1T, which contains 2 kg of the isotope in its active volume.