Double beta decay experiments: beginning of a new era

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent double beta decay experiments, highlighting new large-scale projects like EXO-200 and KamLAND-Zen that mark a new era, and discusses future prospects for detecting neutrinoless double beta decay with high sensitivity.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current and upcoming double beta decay experiments, emphasizing the significance of large-mass isotope experiments and future high-sensitivity searches.

Findings

Current experiments set new limits on Majorana neutrino mass.

Large-scale experiments like EXO-200 and KamLAND-Zen have advanced the field.

Future projects aim for sensitivity to neutrino masses around 0.01-0.1 eV.

Abstract

The review of current experiments on search and studying of double beta decay processes is done. Results of the most sensitive experiments are discussed and values of modern limits on effective Majorana neutrino mass ($<m_{\nu}>) are given. New results on two neutrino double beta decay are presented. The special attention is given to new current experiments with mass of studied isotopes more than 100 kg, EXO--200 and KamLAND--Zen. These experiments open a new era in research of double beta decay. In the second part of the review prospects of search for neutrinoless double beta decay in new experiments with sensitivity to $<m_{\nu}>$ at the level of $\sim 0.01-0.1$ eV are discussed. Parameters and characteristics of the most perspective projects (CUORE, GERDA, MAJORANA, SuperNEMO, EXO, KamLAND--Zen, SNO+) are given.