Conveners
0νββ and antimatter: 0νββ and antimatter
- Annika Lennarz (TRIUMF)
If matter and antimatter were created equally at the Big Bang, then why did they not annihilate each other, leaving behind a barren universe? That our universe is dominated by matter with little antimatter is a mystery of modern physics. At CERN, the ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus) collaboration is studying antihydrogen, investigating its atomic energy levels in a magnetic trap. I...
The search for neutrinoless double-beta decay ($0\nu\beta\beta$) stands among the most promising avenues for uncovering new physics. An observation would confirm Majorana neutrinos, establish lepton-number violation, and potentially reveal the absolute neutrino mass scale. As next-generation experiments propose to push half-life sensitivities up to two orders of magnitude beyond previous...
The ALPHA-g experiment at CERN aims to precisely measure the effect of Earth's gravitational field on antihydrogen atoms, providing a unique test of the weak equivalence principle with antimatter. A key component of the ALPHA-g apparatus is the radial time projection chamber (rTPC), which is designed to detect the annihilation of antihydrogen atoms when they come into contact with matter. The...
Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are single-photon-sensitive devices under consideration for light sensing in noble liquid detectors. One of the experiments considering SiPMs is the neutrinoless double beta decay experiment nEXO. nEXO plans to search for this decay with 5 tonnes of liquid xenon enriched in the isotope Xe-136 over a lifetime of 10 years. SiPMs will be placed inside the liquid...
Neutrinoless double beta decay ($0\nu\beta\beta$) is a hypothetical nuclear process in which two neutrons in a nucleus transform into two protons and two electrons without emitting electron antineutrinos. Its observation would demonstrate lepton number violation in weak processes and confirm that neutrinos are Majorana particles. Next-generation $0\nu\beta\beta$ searches using candidate...
