Nuclear Structure Aspects of Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

Authors

B. Alex Brown, Michigan State UniversityFollow
Mihai Horoi, Central Michigan UniversityFollow
Roman A. Sen′kov, CUNY La Guardia Community CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-22-2014

Abstract

We decompose the neutrinoless double-beta decay matrix elements into sums of products over the intermediate nucleus with two less nucleons. We find that the sum is dominated by the J^pi=0^+ ground state of this intermediate nucleus for both the light and heavy neutrino decay processes. This provides a new theoretical tool for comparing and improving nuclear structure models. It also provides the connection to two-nucleon transfer experiments.

Comments

This article originally appeared in Physical Review Letters, available at DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.262501