New physics potential of double beta decay and dark matter search

TL;DR

This paper reviews how double beta decay and dark matter searches can test physics beyond the standard model, highlighting recent experimental bounds and future prospects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of experimental limits from Heidelberg experiments and discusses future directions like the GENIUS project.

Findings

Established the most restrictive limit on Majorana neutrino mass

Set bounds on leptoquarks, supersymmetry, and left-right models

Derived limits on WIMP-nucleon interactions from double beta decay data

Abstract

The search for neutrinoless double beta decay and WIMP dark matter has a broad potential to test particle physics beyond the standard model. During the last years, the analysis of various contributions to the double beta decay rate by the Heidelberg group led, besides the most restrictive limit on the effective Majorana neutrino mass, to bounds on left-right-symmetric models, leptoquarks and supersymmetry. In a general framework bounds on arbitrary lepton number violating theories can be derived. Using double beta technology for direct dark matter detection, stringent limits on the spin-independent WIMP--nucleon interaction have been obtained. These results deduced from the Heidelberg-Moscow double beta decay experiment are reviewed. Also an outlook on the future of double beta decay and dark matter search, the GENIUS proposal, is given.