First Result on the Neutrinoless Double-β Decay of ^{82}Se with CUPID-0

• Published in: Physical review letters Vol. 120; no. 23; p. 232502
• Main Authors: Azzolini, O, Barrera, M T, Beeman, J W, Bellini, F, Beretta, M, Biassoni, M, Brofferio, C, Bucci, C, Canonica, L, Capelli, S, Cardani, L, Carniti, P, Casali, N, Cassina, L, Clemenza, M, Cremonesi, O, Cruciani, A, D'Addabbo, A, Dafinei, I, Di Domizio, S, Ferroni, F, Gironi, L, Giuliani, A, Gorla, P, Gotti, C, Keppel, G, Marini, L, Martinez, M, Morganti, S, Nagorny, S, Nastasi, M, Nisi, S, Nones, C, Orlandi, D, Pagnanini, L, Pallavicini, M, Palmieri, V, Pattavina, L, Pavan, M, Pessina, G, Pettinacci, V, Pirro, S, Pozzi, S, Previtali, E, Puiu, A, Reindl, F, Rusconi, C, Schäffner, K, Tomei, C, Vignati, M, Zolotarova, A S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 08.06.2018
• ISSN: 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.232502

We report the result of the search for neutrinoless double beta decay of ^{82}Se obtained with CUPID-0, the first large array of scintillating Zn^{82}Se cryogenic calorimeters implementing particle identification. We observe no signal in a 1.83 kg yr ^{82}Se exposure, and we set the most stringent lower limit on the 0νββ ^{82}Se half-life T_{1/2}^{0ν}>2.4×10^{24}  yr (90% credible interval), which corresponds to an effective Majorana neutrino mass m_{ββ}<(376-770)  meV depending on the nuclear matrix element calculations. The heat-light readout provides a powerful tool for the rejection of α particles and allows us to suppress the background in the region of interest down to (3.6_{-1.4}^{+1.9})×10^{-3}  counts/(keV kg yr), an unprecedented level for this technique.