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The nature of the neutrino is one of the most important open questions in particle physics today. Neutrino-less double-beta decay experiments are the only practical way to determine if neutrinos are Majorana particles, i.e., their own anti-particles. This decay would violate lepton number conservation, while a measurement of the half-life of the decay, combined with neutrino oscillation data, would fix the absolute mass-scale of electron neutrinos.
This colloquium will concentrate on the history and development of two of the leading experiments that will operate in the Laboratori Nazionale del Gran Sasso, in Assergi, Italy, namely CUPID (CUORE with Particle Identification), CUPID 1-Tonne, LEGEND-200, and LEGEND-1000. We will discuss some of the history that led to the development of these projects. One interesting connection to cosmology is the fact that today’s universe is dominated by particles, while at the time of the Big Bang, particles and anti-particles should have been created equally, perhaps with a tiny asymmetry of particle over anti-particle. A popular theoretical explanation to explain that asymmetry, called Leptogenesis, requires that there are Majorana neutrinos in the early universe.
ZOOM: http://cfp.ciemat.es/zoomae/eventos