PHENIICS Doctoral School Days

Searching for neutrinoless double beta decay with scintillating bolometers: the LUCINEU experiment

May 11, 2016, 2:30 PM

1h

Auditorium Pierre Lehmann (Laboratoire de l'Accélérateur Linéaire (LAL))

Board: 39

Poster Particle Physics Poster session

Speaker

Ms Anastasiia Zolotarova (CEA/IRFU/SPP)

Description

        Neutrinoless double beta decay is a very rare nuclear process whose observation would provide essential information on neutrino properties. My PhD thesis subject focuses on the search for this phenomenon in the isotope ¹⁰⁰Mo. The thesis activity aims at preparing and performing an underground demonstrator experiment named LUCINEU.

        This experiment uses as detectors scintillating bolometers. They are made of scintillating crystals of ZnMoO₄ and Li₂MoO₄ (including enriched ¹⁰⁰Mo) produced in NIIC (Novosibirsk), NTD Ge thermistors previously characterized in their resistivity- temperature and voltage-current behavior, NTD Ge and light detectors working in the range 10-20 mK.

       Some R&D tests are ongoing at the Underground Laboratory of Modane. In this poster, I will present first results coming from a big enriched Li₂MoO₄ crystal and a detector decoupling system obtained in the EDELWEISS set-up with the aim to get better noise conditions. This configuration is a possible prototype for a suspension system for the LUCINEU project.

        Looking at these results, it is clear that Li₂MoO₄ crystals are very promising candidates for double beta decay researches.