0000000000987385
AUTHOR
J. Menéndez
High intensity neutrino oscillation facilities in Europe
The EUROnu project has studied three possible options for future, high intensity neutrino oscillation facilities in Europe. The first is a Super Beam, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of pions created by bombarding targets with a 4 MW proton beam from the CERN High Power Superconducting Proton Linac. The far detector for this facility is the 500 kt MEMPHYS water Cherenkov, located in the Frejus tunnel. The second facility is the Neutrino Factory, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of mu(+) and mu(-) beams in a storage ring. The far detector in this case is a 100 kt magnetized iron neutrino detector at a baseline of 2000 km. The third option is a Beta Beam, in which the neu…
Two-neutrino ββ decay of 136Xe to the first excited 0+ state in 136Ba
We calculate the nuclear matrix element for the two-neutrino $\beta\beta$ decay of $^{136}$Xe into the first excited $0^+$ state of $^{136}$Ba. We use different many-body methods: the quasiparticle random-phase approximation (QRPA) framework, the nuclear shell model, the interacting boson model (IBM-2), and an effective field theory (EFT) for $\beta$ and $\beta\beta$ decays. While the QRPA suggests a decay rate at the edge of current experimental limits, the shell model points to a half-life about two orders of magnitude longer. The predictions of the IBM-2 and the EFT lie in between, and the latter provides systematic uncertainties at leading order. An analysis of the running sum of the nu…
First glimpse of the $N=82$ shell closure below $Z=50$ from masses of neutron-rich cadmium isotopes and isomers
We probe the $N=82$ nuclear shell closure by mass measurements of neutron-rich cadmium isotopes with the ISOLTRAP spectrometer at ISOLDE-CERN. The new mass of $^{132}$Cd offers the first value of the $N=82$, two-neutron shell gap below $Z=50$ and confirms the phenomenon of mutually enhanced magicity at $^{132}$Sn. Using the recently implemented phase-imaging ion-cyclotron-resonance method, the ordering of the low-lying isomers in $^{129}$Cd and their energies are determined. The new experimental findings are used to test large-scale shell-model, mean-field and beyond-mean-field calculations, as well as the ab initio valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group.
$\gamma\gamma$ decay as a probe of neutrinoless $\beta\beta$ decay nuclear matrix elements
We study double gamma ($\gamma\gamma$) decay nuclear matrix elements (NMEs) for a wide range of nuclei from titanium to xenon, and explore their relation to neutrinoless double-beta ($0\nu\beta\beta$) NMEs. To favor the comparison, we focus on double-magnetic dipole transitions in the final $\beta\beta$ nuclei, in particular the $\gamma\gamma$ decay of the double isobaric analog of the initial $\beta\beta$ state into the ground state. For the decay with equal-energy photons, our large-scale nuclear shell model results show a good linear correlation between the $\gamma\gamma$ and $0\nu\beta\beta$ NMEs. Our analysis reveals that the correlation holds for $\gamma\gamma$ transitions driven by t…