Sensitivity and discovery potential of the proposed nEXO experiment to neutrinoless double beta decay

Abstract

The next-generation Enriched Xenon Observatory (nEXO) is a proposed experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta ($0\hat{I}½{\hat{I}}^2{\hat{I}}^2$) decay in ${}^{136}$Xe with a target half-life sensitivity of approximately $10^{28}$ years using $5\times 10^3$ kg of isotopically enriched liquid-xenon in a time projection chamber. This improvement of two orders of magnitude in sensitivity over current limits is obtained by a significant increase of the ${}^{136}$Xe mass, the monolithic and homogeneous configuration of the active medium, and the multi-parameter measurements of the interactions enabled by the time projection chamber. The detector concept and anticipated performance are presented based upon demonstrated realizable background rates.

v2 as published