Double Beta Decay, Majorana Neutrinos, and Neutrino Mass

TL;DR

This paper reviews the significance of neutrinoless double-beta decay, discussing its implications for particle physics, nuclear physics, and cosmology, and evaluates current experimental and theoretical progress in detecting and understanding this process.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of the theoretical, experimental, and nuclear matrix element calculations related to neutrinoless double-beta decay, highlighting recent advancements and future prospects.

Findings

Neutrinoless double-beta decay would reveal Majorana nature of neutrinos.

Current experiments are approaching sensitivities capable of detecting the decay.

Advances in nuclear theory are crucial for interpreting experimental results.

Abstract

The theoretical and experimental issues relevant to neutrinoless double-beta decay are reviewed. The impact that a direct observation of this exotic process would have on elementary particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics and cosmology is profound. Now that neutrinos are known to have mass and experiments are becoming more sensitive, even the non-observation of neutrinoless double-beta decay will be useful. If the process is actually observed, we will immediately learn much about the neutrino. The status and discovery potential of proposed experiments are reviewed in this context, with significant emphasis on proposals favored by recent panel reviews. The importance of and challenges in the calculation of nuclear matrix elements that govern the decay are considered in detail. The increasing sensitivity of experiments and improvements in nuclear theory make the future exciting for this field at the interface of nuclear and particle physics.