Searches for neutrinoless double beta decay

TL;DR

This paper reviews experimental efforts to detect neutrinoless double beta decay, a process that could reveal neutrinos as their own antiparticles and violate lepton number conservation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of various experimental techniques and their sensitivities, including recent data from key experiments like EXO, Kamland-Zen, GERDA, and CANDLES.

Findings

EXO reported the first half-life measurement for two-neutrino double beta decay of $^{136}$Xe.

Multiple experiments have begun data collection since 2011.

Sensitivity analyses of different experimental proposals are summarized.

Abstract

Neutrinoless double beta decay is a lepton number violating process whose observation would also establish that neutrinos are their own anti-particles. There are many experimental efforts with a variety of techniques. Some (EXO, Kamland-Zen, GERDA phase I and CANDLES) started take data in 2011 and EXO has reported the first measurement of the half life for the double beta decay with two neutrinos of $^{136}$Xe. The sensitivities of the different proposals are reviewed.