Date and Time: Monday, 11 September 2017, at 11:00 AM

Venue: Conference Hall, Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems

Seminar topic: «Search of neutrinoless double beta decay with Ge-76: latest results of GERDA experiment and a new germanium detector type for LEGEND project»

Speaker: Dr. Bernhard Schwingenheuer (Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg)

Abstract:

The search for neutrinoless double beta decay is an important research topic and experiments using germanium detectors made from material enriched in the relevant isotope Ge-76 are currently among the most sensitive ones. GERDA has recently announced a new half-life limit of 8.0E25 yr and continues to take data. The final sensitivity will be beyond 1E26 yr. The main reason for the success is the low background which is an order of magnitude lower compared to other experiments in the field if normalized to the energy resolution. Further improvement rely on even lower background levels. One idea to achieve this goal is to increase the mass per detector. The amount of cables and support material can be reduced accordingly since these components are the source of important background contributions. The novel inverted-coax detector type is a promising candidate and first results concerning pulse shape discrimination of this detector are discussed in the talk. This detector type is therefore very promising for the future LEGEND experiment.