Speaker
Mr
David Lorca Galindo
(IFIC-CSIC)
Description
NEXT (an acronym for Neutrinoless Experiment with a Xenon TPC) will search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of 136Xe using a radiopure high-pressure xenon gas TPC filled with 100 kg of Xe enriched in its 136Xe isotope. A measurement of this hypothetical process would provide direct information on neutrino masses at the same time that would lead to a better understanding of many aspects of the current Standard Model of Particle Physics, and the structure of the Universe. The NEXT-100 detector, thanks to its excellent energy resolution, together with powerful background rejection based on track reconstruction, will be one of the leading experiment in the field, exploring the region of neutrino masses down to 100 meV.
In this talk, we will describe the physics case of the NEXT experiment together with the latest results obtained with NEXT-DEMO, a scaled-down prototype of the final detector which has been built to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology. In its final configuration, NEXT-DEMO includes an energy plane made of PMTs and a tracking plane made of SiPMs. X-ray energy depositions, produced by the de-excitation of xenon atoms after their interaction with gamma rays coming from different sources, have been used to characterize the detector response and the spatial calibration needed for close-to-optimal energy resolution. In addition, these data have been used to measure different detection properties of high-pressure xenon, such as electron drift velocity or longitudinal diffusion.
Primary author
Mr
David Lorca Galindo
(IFIC-CSIC)
