LEGEND-1000 Preconceptual Design Report
Abstract
We propose the construction of LEGEND-1000, the ton-scale Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless $\beta \beta$ Decay. This international experiment is designed to answer one of the highest priority questions in fundamental physics. It consists of 1000 kg of Ge detectors enriched to more than 90% in the $^{76}$Ge isotope operated in a liquid argon active shield at a deep underground laboratory. By combining the lowest background levels with the best energy resolution in the field, LEGEND-1000 will perform a quasi-background-free search and can make an unambiguous discovery of neutrinoless double-beta decay with just a handful of counts at the decay $Q$ value. The experiment is designed to probe this decay with a 99.7%-CL discovery sensitivity in the $^{76}$Ge half-life of $1.3\times10^{28}$ years, corresponding to an effective Majorana mass upper limit in the range of 9-21 meV, to cover the inverted-ordering neutrino mass scale with 10 yr of live time.
Type
Department
Description
Provenance
Subjects
Citation
Permalink
Collections
Scholars@Duke
Phillip S. Barbeau
Professor Barbeau’s research interests are predominantly in the fields of neutrino and astroparticle physics. His efforts are focused on (but not limited to) three major areas of research: studying the physics of coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering; novel searches for the dark matter in our universe; and searches for zero neutrino double beta decay. The unifying aspect of the work is the common need for new and creative detector development in order to solve some of the “hard” problems in low-background rare-event detection.
Unless otherwise indicated, scholarly articles published by Duke faculty members are made available here with a CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial) license, as enabled by the Duke Open Access Policy. If you wish to use the materials in ways not already permitted under CC-BY-NC, please consult the copyright owner. Other materials are made available here through the author’s grant of a non-exclusive license to make their work openly accessible.