Limits on different majoron decay modes of 100Mo and 82Se for neutrinoless double beta decays in the NEMO-3 experiment

The NEMO-3 tracking detector is located in the Fréjus Underground Laboratory. It was designed to study double beta decay in a number of different isotopes. Presented here are the experimental half-life limits on the double beta decay process for the isotopes 100Mo and 82Se for different majoron emission modes and limits on the effective neutrino–majoron coupling constants. In particular, new limits on “ordinary” majoron (spectral index 1) decay of 100Mo (T1/2>2.7×1022 yr) and 82Se (T1/2>1.5×1022 yr) have been obtained. Corresponding bounds on the majoron–neutrino coupling constant are gee<(0.4–1.8)×10−4 and <(0.66–1.9)×10−4

Effects of architectural issues on a km3 scale detector

Simulation results showing the comparison between the performance of different km3 detector geometries are reported. Effective neutrino areas and angular resolutions are reported for three different geometries based on NEMO-towers and strings. The results show that the NEMO-tower based detector has the best performance concerning both the effective area and the angular resolution isotropyComment: to be published on VVVNT2 proceedings (Catania, Italy, November 8-11, 2005

Results from NEMO 3

The NEMO 3 experiment is located in the Modane Underground Laboratory and has been taking data since 2003 with seven isotopes. It is searching for the double beta decay process with two or zero neutrinos emitted in the final state. Precision measurements of the half-life of the isotopes due to two neutrino double beta decay have been performed and new results for 96Zr, 48Ca and 150Nd are presented here. Measurements of this process are important for reducing the uncertainties on the nuclear matrix elements. No evidence for zero neutrino double beta decay has been found and a 90% Confidence Level lower limit on the half-life of this process is derived. From this an upper limit can be set on the effective Majorana neutrino mass using the most recent nuclear matrix elements calculations.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, a paper submitted to the proceedings for the conference Neutrino0

Measurement of the double-ss decay half-life and search for the neutrinoless double-ss decay of Ca-48 with the NEMO-3 detector

Neutrinoless double-β decay is a powerful probe of lepton number violating processes that may arise from Majorana terms in neutrino masses, or from supersymmetric, left-right symmetric, and other extensions of the Standard Model. Of the candidate isotopes for the observation of this process, 48Ca has the highest Qββ -value, resulting in decays with energies significantly above most naturally occurring backgrounds. The nucleus also lends itself to precise matrix element calculations within the nuclear shell model. We present the world's best measurement of the two-neutrino double-β decay of 48Ca, obtained by the NEMO-3 collaboration using 5.25 yr of data recorded with a 6.99 g sample of isotope, yielding ≈ 150 events with a signal to background ratio larger than 3. Neutrinoless modes of double-β decay are also investigated, with no evidence of new physics. Furthermore, these results indicate that two-neutrino double-β decay would be the main source of background for similar future searches using 48Ca with significantly larger exposures

Inertial bioluminescence rhythms at the Capo Passero (KM3NeT-Italia) site, Central Mediterranean Sea

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

High-Energy Neutrino Astronomy

Kilometer-scale neutrino detectors such as IceCube are discovery instruments covering nuclear and particle physics, cosmology and astronomy. Examples of their multidisciplinary missions include the search for the particle nature of dark matter and for additional small dimensions of space. In the end, their conceptual design is very much anchored to the observational fact that Nature accelerates protons and photons to energies in excess of $10^{20}$ and $10^{13}$ eV, respectively. The cosmic ray connection sets the scale of cosmic neutrino fluxes. In this context, we discuss the first results of the completed AMANDA detector and the reach of its extension, IceCube. Similar experiments are under construction in the Mediterranean. Neutrino astronomy is also expanding in new directions with efforts to detect air showers, acoustic and radio signals initiated by super-EeV neutrinos.Comment: 9 pages, Latex2e, uses ws-procs975x65standard.sty (included), 4 postscript figures. To appear in Proceedings of Thinking, Observing, and Mining the Universe, Sorrento, Italy, September 200

S4 Flavor Symmetry and Fermion Masses: Towards a Grand Unified theory of Flavor

Pursuing a bottom-up approach to explore which flavor symmetry could serve as an explanation of the observed fermion masses and mixings, we discuss an extension of the standard model (SM) where the flavor structure for both quarks and leptons is determined by a spontaneously broken S4 and the requirement that its particle content is embeddable simultaneously into the conventional SO(10) grand unified theory (GUT) and a continuous flavor symmetry G_f like SO(3)_f or SU(3)_f. We explicitly provide the Yukawa and the Higgs sector of the model and show its viability in two numerical examples which arise as small deviations from rank one matrices. In the first case, the corresponding mass matrix is democratic and in the second one only its 2-3 block is non-vanishing. We demonstrate that the Higgs potential allows for the appropriate vacuum expectation value (VEV) configurations in both cases, if CP is conserved. For the first case, the chosen Yukawa couplings can be made natural by invoking an auxiliary Z2 symmetry. The numerical study we perform shows that the best-fit values for the lepton mixing angles theta_12 and theta_23 can be accommodated for normal neutrino mass hierarchy. The results for the quark mixing angles turn out to be too small. Furthermore the CP-violating phase delta can only be reproduced correctly in one of the examples. The small mixing angle values are likely to be brought into the experimentally allowed ranges by including radiative corrections. Interestingly, due to the S4 symmetry the mass matrix of the right-handed neutrinos is proportional to the unit matrix.Comment: 27 pages, published version with minor change