The CUORE experiment at LNGS

Abstract

Since the discovery of neutrino, many of its properties have been studied. The flavor oscillations recently revealed that, contrary to the Standard Model assumptions, neutrinos have a finite mass. Other neutrino characteristics are still to be investigated, such as its Dirac or Majorana nature: experiments are currently searching for a rare phenomenon, the neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ), whose observation would solve this issue. The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) at Gran Sasso National Laboratories focuses on the search of 130Te 0νββ and it is the first ton-scale bolometric experiment ever realized for this purpose. The detector is hosted inside a custom cryostat and consists of 988 TeO2 crystals, operated at a temperature of ∼ 10 mK. The CUORE goals in 5 years of data taking are an energy resolution of 5 keV FWHM and a background level of 0.01 counts/keV/kg/y in the 130Te 0νββ region of interest. This corresponds to a sensitivity on the 130Te 0νββ half life of T1/2 = 9 · 1025 y (90% C.L.) and an upper limit to the effective Majorana mass of 50 − 130 meV. The CUORE commissioning has been recently completed; the experiment has just concluded the pre-operation phase and data taking is currently ongoing.