Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay
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REPORT TO THE NUCLEAR SCIENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay NOVEMBER 18, 2015 NLDBD Report November 18, 2015 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In March 2015, DOE and NSF charged NSAC Subcommittee on neutrinoless double beta decay (NLDBD) to provide additional guidance related to the development of next generation experimentation for this field. The new charge (Appendix A) requests a status report on the existing efforts in this subfield, along with an assessment of the necessary R&D required for each candidate technology before a future downselect. The Subcommittee membership was augmented to replace several members who were not able to continue in this phase (the present Subcommittee membership is attached as Appendix B). The Subcommittee solicited additional written input from the present worldwide collaborative efforts on double beta decay projects in order to collect the information necessary to address the new charge. An open meeting was held where these collaborations were invited to present material related to their current projects, conceptual designs for next generation experiments, and the critical R&D required before a potential down-select. We also heard presentations related to nuclear theory and the impact of future cosmological data on the subject of NLDBD. The Subcommittee presented its principal findings and comments in response to the March 2015 charge at the NSAC meeting in October 2015. The March 2015 charge requested the Subcommittee to: Assess the status of ongoing R&D for NLDBD candidate technology demonstrations for a possible future ton-scale NLDBD experiment. For each candidate technology demonstration, identify the major remaining R&D tasks needed ONLY to demonstrate downselect criteria, including the sensitivity goals, outlined in the NSAC report of May 2014. R&D needs for candidate technology demonstrations should be sufficiently documented beyond assertion to allow critical examination by the panel and future assessments. Identify the time durations needed to accomplish these activities and the corresponding estimated resources, as reported by the candidate technology demonstration groups. Guided by the R&D assessments provided by this NSAC subcommittee and within funding availability, NSF and DOE plan to move forward in a coordinated, unified approach to address these R&D needs, similar to the process used in the recent joint effort on the second generation dark matter experiments. That process included independent calls for proposals with coordinated requirements, and a joint review. The role of this NSAC subcommittee is to assess the proposed R&D plans for each technology, but not to review the relative value of the plans for one technique vs. another. In general, the suite of mid-scale experiments and demonstration projects are making good progress in setting new 0 limits and in testing out techniques that can be extrapolated to ton-scale installations. During the next 1-2 years many techniques will be acquiring data and producing a body of information that will inform the future plans. However, it is already clear that additional R&D issues must be resolved in preparation for a future downselect decision. 1 NLDBD Report November 18, 2015 Therefore the subcommittee strongly recommends that R&D efforts aimed at solving specific technical issues relevant to the downselect decision be supported. The additional R&D required for each technology was presented to the subcommittee and discussed with the collaborations. For several methods, it is clear that a few well-defined issues need attention, and a 2-3 year R&D program offers good prospects for resolution. For the most part, the cases identified in this report will be straightforward to address through further review. Other technical issues have more open-ended R&D requirements to address. In these cases the allocation of resources will be more difficult to assess. In any case, the longer term future of NLDBD will require continued R&D effort. The subcommittee strongly urges continuation of longer term R&D necessary for the future development of the subject in addition to the support of shorter term R&D aimed at a near future downselect. It was noted by the subcommittee that there are several common R&D topics that would benefit several different techniques. It seems in these cases that a coordinated approach could be a more efficient use of resources. The subcommittee suggests that the funding agencies consider an approach that would encourage several groups to work together on these common goals. There is clearly substantial, and growing, international interest in NLDBD. The decision by the US community on its strategy for the next generation experiment will necessarily involve consideration of the international context. Coordination with the international community will clearly be a necessary component in future decisions on technology selection. The subcommittee also reviewed the scientific context and motivation for NLDBD experiments. There are many developments in cosmology and in accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiments that bear on the issues of mass hierarchy and absolute neutrino mass which are highly relevant to NLDBD. One can anticipate further developments that impact the interpretation of NLDBD experiments in the next few years. For example, potential new physics that may emerge from LHC experiments or results from sterile neutrino experiments can have substantial impact on NLDBD, perhaps increasing the already strong motivation for future NLDBD experiments. Furthermore, it is important to remember that NLDBD has a unique role in potentially addressing the issue of Dirac vs. Majorana nature of neutrinos. The Subcommittee remains convinced that the scientific case for pursuing NLDBD experiments at the ton-scale is very compelling. The subcommittee also considered the progress in nuclear theory of NLDBD, which is important in providing guidance to the experiments and is crucial to the interpretation of the experiments in the context of models of lepton-number violation. There appears to be a trend towards increasing and broadening the community of nuclear theorists working on this problem and towards employing the most modern theoretical techniques. Indeed a proposed topical theory collaboration to address the issue of calculation of the nuclear matrix elements, including quantification of the uncertainties, has been approved for funding by the DOE Office of Nuclear 2 NLDBD Report November 18, 2015 Physics. Given these developments, it is reasonable to expect that the uncertainty in the nuclear matrix elements will be significantly reduced in the near future. 3 NLDBD Report November 18, 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................................................... 1 1.0 OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................... 5 2.0 STATUS OF CURRENT PROJECTS AND R&D PLANS ............................................................... 10 3.0 NUCLEAR THEORY UPDATE ................................................................................................... 33 4.0 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................... 35 APPENDIX A: CHARGE TO NSAC .................................................................................................... 36 APPENDIX B: SUBCOMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP............................................................................... 38 APPENDIX C: MEETING AGENDA................................................................................................... 40 APPENDIX D: GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS ...................................................................................... 42 4 NLDBD Report November 18, 2015 1.0 OVERVIEW Introduction The experimental study of neutrinoless double beta decay (NLDBD) is an important component of an international effort to study the properties of neutrinos. The subject received tremendous impetus from the 1998 discovery of neutrino oscillations by the SuperKamioande experiment and the 2002 discovery of neutrino flavor transformation as the solution to the solar neutrino problem by the SNO experiment. These two experiments were recoqnized by the award of the 2015 Nobel prize in physics to Arthur B. McDonald and Takaaki Kajita. The study of NLDB is viewed as addressing some of the key remaining questions in neutrino physics today. The previous report [1] of this subcommittee, received by NSAC in April 2014, described in some detail the status of experimental efforts in neutrinoless double beta decay (NLDBD), some guidelines for consideration of future next generation experiments, and the status of nuclear theory calculations. In this report we address the new charge (Appendix A) from DOE/NSF to update the status of existing efforts and to assess the necessary R&D required for each candidate technology before a potential future downselect. In this overview, we address some overall themes and issues relevant to the whole field and related areas of neutrino physics and cosmology. The following section 2 discusses the recent progress of the various NLDBD projects since our last report and the R&D proposed for each technology by the proponents. Section 3 presents an update on the status of nuclear theory relevant to the evaluation of nuclear matrix elements involved in the interpretation of NLDBD experiments. General