Searching for neutrinoless double beta decay of 100Mo with lithium molybdate scintillating bolometers

by Prof. Andrea Giuliani (Centre de Spectrométrie Nucléaire et de Spectrométrie de Masse)

Tuesday 12 Jun 2018, 16:15 → 17:15 Europe/Berlin

Auditorium (MPI Meeting rooms)

Lithium molybdate (Li2MoO4) single crystals are excellent material for the construction of bolometers to search for neutrinoless double beta decay of the isotope 100Mo. After establishing a protocol for the purification and the crystallization of molybdenum, we have tested several samples of 100Mo-enriched Li2MoO4 crystals in a scintillating-bolometer configuration, with a typical mass of the order of 200 g. Given the excellent reproducibility of these devices in terms of energy resolution, low intrinsic radioactivity and high alpha-background rejection capability, we built a demonstrator, named CUPID-Mo, to perform a competitive search for neutrinoless double beta decay of 100Mo. The CUPID-Mo detector consists of 20 scintillating bolometers with a total 100Mo mass of 2.34 kg of 100Mo, assembled in a compact structure of 5 suspended towers. The data taking with the 20-crystal array is just starting (June 2018) in the underground facility of Modane in France. An additional pilot experiment will be built in Italy in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory. Data collected by the two demonstrators will be used to validate the Li2MoO4 technology, which is presently the baseline option for CUPID, a next-generation double beta decay experiment proposed as a follow-up to the CUORE project at Gran Sasso.