CUORE and beyond: bolometric techniques to explore inverted neutrino mass hierarchy

TL;DR

The paper discusses the CUORE experiment's use of bolometric techniques to search for neutrinoless double beta decay, aiming to explore the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy with high sensitivity and potential improvements.

Contribution

It presents the CUORE experiment's design, projected sensitivity, and discusses how bolometric techniques can be enhanced to better explore the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy.

Findings

Projected half-life sensitivity of 1.6×10^{26} years after five years

Energy resolution of 5 keV at the region of interest

Potential for background rejection improvements

Abstract

The CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) experiment will search for neutrinoless double beta decay of $^{130}$Te. With 741 kg of TeO$_2$ crystals and an excellent energy resolution of 5 keV (0.2%) at the region of interest, CUORE will be one of the most competitive neutrinoless double beta decay experiments on the horizon. With five years of live time, CUORE projected neutrinoless double beta decay half-life sensitivity is $1.6\times 10^{26}$ y at $1\sigma$ ($9.5\times10^{25}$ y at the 90% confidence level), which corresponds to an upper limit on the effective Majorana mass in the range 40--100 meV (50--130 meV). Further background rejection with auxiliary light detector can significantly improve the search sensitivity and competitiveness of bolometric detectors to fully explore the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy with $^{130}$Te and possibly other double beta decay candidate nuclei.