Recent advances (of my group) in studies of double beta decay and related processes
Jouni Suhonen
University of Jyväskylä
Abstract: Already for decades the detection of neutrinoless double beta decay (NDBD) of atomic nuclei has been considered the best way to learn about the fundamental properties of neutrinos: Majorana mass and neutrino mass hierarchy, lepton-number non-conservation, etc. A lot of money has been invested to large experiments hunting for this decay and its sister process, two-neutrino double beta decay, a second-order standard-model process already detected for several double-beta nuclei. Parallel to the strong experimental efforts, intense theoretical study of the nuclear matrix elements (NMEs) related to both modes of double beta decay has been pursued. In these studies several nuclear models have been proposed and a wide spectrum of different values for the NMEs has been obtained. Unfortunately, the rather large discrepancies in the computed values of NDBD NMEs will obscure the derivation of neutrino properties from the potentially measured NDBD half-life. I will discuss some of my recently proposed nuclear models for the computation of the NDBD NMEs, including possible preliminary results.
The other important ingredient of reliable NDBD computations is the proper treatment of the effective value of the weak axial coupling, affecting both the total NDBD NME but also strongly the computed NDBD half-life. To study the nuclear-structure ingredients of NDBD and the effective axial coupling, complementary nuclear processes have been proposed: Among these, I will discuss the ordinary muon capture for studies of the properties of the intermediate nucleus, located between the mother and grand daughter nuclei of NDBD, and single beta decays for studies of the effective value of the weak axial coupling.
Seminar takes place on Tuesday, September 8th 2026 at 2:00 PM
in the IEAP conference center, Praha 1, Husova 240/5.
| Ing. Bartoloměj Biskup, Ph.D. seminar chair |
doc. Ing. Ivan Štekl, CSc. director of IEAP |
doc. Dr. André Sopczak IEEE CS - NPSS chair |
NUCLEAR & PLASMA SCIENCES SOCIETY CHAPTER
IEEE Czechoslovakia section
https://www.ieee.cz/main/section/nps/