F. Alessandria

CUORE EXPERIMENT: THE SEARCH FOR NEUTRINOLESS DOUBLE BETA DECAY

The main purpose of the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) experiment is the search for the Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (0νDBD) of 130Te reaching a sensitivity on Majorana mass better than 50 meV. Cuoricino represents not only the first stage of CUORE, but also the most massive 0νDBD experiment presently running. Present results and future planning of these experiments will be described in the paper.

An active-shield method for the reduction of surface contamination in CUORE

The main goal of the CUORE experiment is to search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of 130Te. As it is a rare nuclear decay, the sensitivity of the experiment strongly depends on the background level in the transition energy region. In this paper we describe the R&D work performed to develop an active method for the reduction of radioactive background in CUORE. The idea is to reject events originated by surface contamination in large mass bolometric detectors by using bolometers sensitive to surface events. Results obtained with the first prototypes and tests made with large mass surface sensitive bolometers will be reported.

New CUORICINO results on the way to CUORE

CUORE is a 0.75 ton experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay of Te130 using 988 TeO2 bolometers. It aims at reaching a sensitivity on the effective neutrino mass of the order of few tens of meV. CUORICINO, a single CUORE tower running since 2003, plays an important role as a stand alone experiment and for developing the future CUORE setup. Present results already achieved and studies that are underway are here presented and discussed.

Passive shielding in CUORE

The nature of neutrino mass is one of the friontier problems of fundamental physics. Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (0νDBD) is a powerful tool to investigate the mass hierarchy and possible extensions of the Standard Model. CUORE is a 1‐Ton next generation experiment, made of 1000 Te bolometers, aiming at reaching a background of 0.01 (possibly 0.001) counts keV−1kg−1y−1 and therefore a mass sensitivity of few tens of meV The background contribution due to environmental neutrons, muon‐induced neutrons in the shieldings and external gamma is discussed.