Final results on the $$0\nu \beta \beta $$ decay half-life limit of $$^{100}$$Mo from the CUPID-Mo experiment

Abstract

AbstractThe CUPID-Mo experiment to search for 0$$\nu \beta \beta $$ ν β β decay in $$^{100}$$ 100 Mo has been recently completed after about 1.5 years of operation at Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (France). It served as a demonstrator for CUPID, a next generation 0$$\nu \beta \beta $$ ν β β decay experiment. CUPID-Mo was comprised of 20 enriched $$\hbox {Li}_{{2}}$$ Li 2 $$^{100}$$ 100 $$\hbox {MoO}_4$$ MoO 4 scintillating calorimeters, each with a mass of $$\sim 0.2$$ ∼ 0.2  kg, operated at $$\sim 20$$ ∼ 20  mK. We present here the final analysis with the full exposure of CUPID-Mo ($$^{100}$$ 100 Mo exposure of 1.47 $$\hbox {kg} \times \hbox {year}$$ kg × year ) used to search for lepton number violation via 0$$\nu \beta \beta $$ ν β β decay. We report on various analysis improvements since the previous result on a subset of data, reprocessing all data with these new techniques. We observe zero events in the region of interest and set a new limit on the $$^{100}$$ 100 Mo 0$$\nu \beta \beta $$ ν β β decay half-life of $$T_{1/2}^{0\nu }$$ T 1 / 2 0 ν $$> {1.8}\times 10^{24}$$ > 1.8 × 10 24  year (stat. + syst.) at 90% CI. Under the light Majorana neutrino exchange mechanism this corresponds to an effective Majorana neutrino mass of $$\left<m_{\beta \beta }\right>$$ m β β  $$<~{(0.28{-}0.49)} $$ < ( 0.28 - 0.49 )  eV, dependent upon the nuclear matrix element utilized.