Fri·Jun 8, 2018Friday·June 8, 2018

1. 01*

   An improved half-life limit of the double beta decay of ${}^{94}$Zr into the excited state of ${}^{94}$Mo

   N Dokania🇺🇸 · D Degering🇩🇪 · B Lehnert🇩🇪 · V Nanal🇮🇳 · K Zuber🇩🇪

   A search for the double beta decay transition of ${}^{94}$Zr into the first excited state of ${}^{94}$Mo has been performed at the Felsenkeller underground laboratory in Dresden, Germany. A 341.1 g zirconium sample with natural isotopic composition has been measured for 43.9 d in an ultra low background gamma spectroscopy setup. No signal has been observed and a new best lower half-life limit is set as $5.2\times 10^{19}$ yr (90% CI). This limit is valid for the $0\nu \beta \beta$ and $2\nu \beta \beta$ decay into excited states of ${}^{94}$Mo but cannot distinguish between the two modes. Existing limits are improved by 50%.

   nucl-exJ.Phys.G(2018)·3 citations
2. 02*

   Revised Cross Section of the ${}^{13}$C($\alpha$,n)${}^{16}$O reaction between 5 and 8 MeV

   Peter Mohr🇭🇺

   As suggested in a Comment by Peters, Phys.\ Rev.\ C {\bf 96}, 029801 (2017), a correction is applied to the ${}^{13}$C($\alpha$,n)${}^{16}$O data of Harissopulos {\it et al.}, Phys.\ Rev.\ C {\bf 72}, 062801(R) (2005). The correction refers to the energy-dependent efficiency of the neutron detector and appears only above the ($\alpha$,n${}_1$) threshold of the ${}^{13}$C($\alpha$,n)${}^{16}$O reaction at about $E_{\alpha }\approx 5$ MeV. The corrected data are lower than the original data by almost a factor of two. The correction method is verified using recent neutron spectroscopy data and data from the reverse ${}^{16}$O(n,$\alpha$)${}^{13}$C reaction.

   nucl-exPRC(2018)·18 citations
3. 03*

   The Focal plane Detector Package on the TUNL Split-pole Spectrograph

   Caleb Marshall🇺🇸 · Kiana Setoodehnia · Katie Kowal · Federico Portillo · Arthur E. Champagne🇺🇸 · Stephen Hale · Andrew Dummer · Richard Longland🇺🇸

   A focal plane detector for the Enge Split-pole Spectrograph at Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory has been designed. The detector package consists of two position sensitive gas avalanche counters, a gas proportionality energy loss section, and a residual energy scintillator. This setup allows both particle identification and focal plane reconstruction. In this paper we will detail the construction of each section along with their accompanying electronics and data acquisition. Effects of energy loss throughout the detector, ray tracing procedures, and resolution as a function of fill pressure and bias voltage are also investigated. A measurement of the ${}^{27}$Al$(d,p)$ reaction is used to demonstrate detector performance and to illustrate a Bayesian method of energy calibration.

   ↳ physics.ins-detnucl-exIEEE Trans.Instrum.Measur.(2018)·16 citations
4. 04*

   A neutrinoless double beta decay master formula from effective field theory

   V. Cirigliano🇺🇸 · W. Dekens🇺🇸 · J. de Vries🇳🇱 · M. L. Graesser🇺🇸 · E. Mereghetti🇺🇸

   We present a master formula describing the neutrinoless-double-beta decay ($0\nu \beta \beta$) rate induced by lepton-number-violating (LNV) operators up to dimension nine in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory. We provide an end-to-end framework connecting the possibly very high LNV scale to the nuclear scale, through a chain of effective field theories. Starting at the electroweak scale, we integrate out the heavy Standard Model degrees of freedom and we match to an $SU(3{)}_c\otimes U(1{)}_{\mathrm{em}}$ effective theory. After evolving the resulting effective Lagrangian to the QCD scale, we use chiral perturbation theory to derive the lepton-number-violating chiral Lagrangian. The chiral Lagrangian is used to derive the two-nucleon $0\nu \beta \beta$ transition operators to leading order in the chiral power counting. Based on renormalization arguments we show that in various cases short-range two-nucleon operators need to be enhanced to leading order. We show that all required nuclear matrix elements can be taken from existing calculations. Our final result is a master formula that describes the $0\nu \beta \beta$ rate in terms of phase-space factors, nuclear matrix elements, hadronic low-energy constants, QCD evolution factors, and high-energy LNV Wilson coefficients, including all the interference terms. Our master formula can be easily matched to any model where LNV originates at energy scales above the electroweak scale. As an explicit example, we match our formula to the minimal left-right-symmetric model in which contributions of operators of different dimension compete, and we discuss the resulting phenomenology.

   ↳ hep-phnucl-exnucl-thJHEP(2018)·187 citations
5. 05*

   Analysis of cryogenic calorimeters with light and heat read-out for double beta decay searches

   O. Azzolini🇮🇹 · M. T. Barrera🇮🇹 · J. W. Beeman🇺🇸 · F. Bellini🇮🇹 · M. Beretta🇮🇹 · M. Biassoni🇮🇹 · E. Bossio🇮🇹 · C. Brofferio🇮🇹 · C. Bucci🇮🇹 · L. Canonica🇮🇹 · S. Capelli🇮🇹 · L. Cardani🇮🇹 and 38 other authors

   The suppression of spurious events in the region of interest for neutrinoless double beta decay will play a major role in next generation experiments. The background of detectors based on the technology of cryogenic calorimeters is expected to be dominated by {\alpha} particles, that could be disentangled from double beta decay signals by exploiting the difference in the emission of the scintillation light. CUPID-0, an array of enriched Zn${}^{82}$Se scintillating calorimeters, is the first large mass demonstrator of this technology. The detector started data-taking in 2017 at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso with the aim of proving that dual read-out of light and heat allows for an efficient suppression of the {\alpha} background. In this paper we describe the software tools we developed for the analysis of scintillating calorimeters and we demonstrate that this technology allows to reach an unprecedented background for cryogenic calorimeters.

   ↳ physics.ins-detnucl-exEPJC(2018)·52 citations

* Reconstructed cohort: no mailing for this day survives in the archive. Papers are grouped by their submission times and arXiv's announcement cut-off, assuming announcement without delay; positions follow identifier order. Validated at ~91% exact-day agreement against the archived era.