Measurement of the double-beta decay half-life and search for the neutrinoless double-beta decay of 48Ca with the NEMO-3 detector

• Published in: Physical review. D 2016, Vol.93
• Main Authors: Arnold, R., Augier, C., Bakalyarov, A. M., Baker, J. D., Barabash, A. S., Basharina-Freshville, A., Blondel, S., Blot, S., Bongrand, M., Brudanin, V., Busto, J., Caffrey, A. J., Calvez, S., Cascella, M., Cerna, C., Cesar, J. P., Chapon, A., Chauveau, E., Chopra, A., Duchesneau, D., Durand, D., Egorov, V., Eurin, G., Evans, J. J., Fajt, L., Filosofov, D., Flack, R., Garrido, X., Gómez, H., Guillon, B., Guzowski, P., Hodák, R., Huber, A., Hubert, P., Hugon, C., Jullian, S., Klimenko, A., Kochetov, O., Konovalov, S. I., Kovalenko, V., Lalanne, D., Lang, K., Lebedev, V. I., Lemière, Y., Le Noblet, T., Liptak, Z., Liu, X. R., Loaiza, P., Lutter, G., Mamedov, F., Marquet, C., Mauger, F., Morgan, B., Mott, J., Nemchenok, I., Nomachi, M., Nova, F., Nowacki, F., Ohsumi, H., Pahlka, R. B., Perrot, F., Piquemal, F., Povinec, P., Přidal, P., Ramachers, Y. A., Remoto, A., Reyss, J. L., Richards, B., Riddle, C. L., Rukhadze, E., Rukhadze, N. I., Saakyan, R., Salazar, R., Sarazin, X., Shitov, Yu, Simard, L., Šimkovic, F., Smetana, A., Smolek, K., Smolnikov, A., Söldner-Rembold, S., Soulé, B., Štekl, I., Suhonen, J., Sutton, C. S., Szklarz, G., Thomas, J., Timkin, V., Torre, S., Tretyak, Vl. I., Tretyak, V. I., Umatov, V. I., Vanushin, I., Vilela, C., Vorobel, V., Waters, D., Zhukov, S. V., Žukauskas, A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: High Energy Physics - Experiment; Instrumentation and Detectors; Nuclear Experiment; Physics
• ISSN: 2470-0010; 2470-0029
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.93.112008

The NEMO-3 experiment at the Modane Underground Laboratory investigates the double-beta decay of 48Ca. Using 5.25 yr of data recorded with a 6.99 g sample of 48Ca, approximately 150 double-beta decay candidate events are selected with a signal-to-background ratio greater than 3. The half-life for the two-neutrino double-beta decay of 48Ca is measured to be T1/2 2 ν=[6. 4-0.6+0.7(stat)-0.9 +1.2(syst ) ]×1 019 yr . A search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of 48Ca yields a null result, and a corresponding lower limit on the half-life is found to be T1/2 0 ν>2.0 ×1 022 yr at 90% confidence level, translating into an upper limit on the effective Majorana neutrino mass of ⟨mβ β⟩