Speaker
Description
Neutrinoless double beta decay offers the most sensitive laboratory access to lepton number violation and to the Majorana nature of the neutrino, and the reach of any search is set directly by detector performance. I will review where the field stands: the leading experiments have set half-life limits above 10^26 yr in 136Xe and 76Ge, while the 130Te and 100Mo programs are now moving to their next-generation detectors. These results have established a great deal about energy resolution, background control, and the operation of detectors at the tonne scale. The next generation, aiming at sensitivities that reach 10^28 yr, approaches the same goal through very different detector strategies: high-purity germanium in LEGEND-1000, loaded liquid scintillator in KamLAND2-Zen, xenon time projection chambers in nEXO and high-pressure gas experiments, and cryogenic calorimeters in CUPID and AMoRE-II. The last two use the same isotope, 100Mo, but different readout technologies — germanium light detectors in CUPID, metallic magnetic calorimeters in AMoRE-II at Yemilab in Korea. I will close on what would be required to establish a discovery.