First observation of two-neutrino double electron capture in ${}^{124}$Xe with XENON1T

Abstract

Two-neutrino double electron capture ($2\nu$ECEC) is a second-order Weak process with predicted half-lives that surpass the age of the Universe by many orders of magnitude. Until now, indications for $2\nu$ECEC decays have only been seen for two isotopes, ${}^{78}$Kr and ${}^{130}$Ba, and instruments with very low background levels are needed to detect them directly with high statistical significance. The $2\nu$ECEC half-life provides an important input for nuclear structure models and its measurement represents a first step in the search for the neutrinoless double electron capture processes ($0\nu$ECEC). A detection of the latter would have implications for the nature of the neutrino and give access to the absolute neutrino mass. Here we report on the first direct observation of $2\nu$ECEC in ${}^{124}$Xe with the XENON1T Dark Matter detector. The significance of the signal is $4.4\sigma$ and the corresponding half-life $T_{1/2}^{2\nu \text{ECEC}}=(1.8\pm 0.5_{\text{stat}}\pm 0.1_{\text{sys}})\times 10^{22}\text{y}$ is the longest ever measured directly. This study demonstrates that the low background and large target mass of xenon-based Dark Matter detectors make them well suited to measuring other rare processes as well, and it highlights the broad physics reach for even larger next-generation experiments.

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