https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-5812-2
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Upgrade for Phase II of the Gerda experiment
1
INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso and Gran Sasso Science Institute, Assergi, Italy
2
INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, Catania, Italy
3
Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
4
Institut für Kern- und Teilchenphysik, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany
5
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia
6
European Commission, JRC-Geel, Geel, Belgium
7
Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany
8
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy
9
INFN Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy
10
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Milano e INFN Milano, Milan, Italy
11
Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
12
Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, NRC “Kurchatov Institute”, Moscow, Russia
13
National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute”, Moscow, Russia
14
Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Munich, Germany
15
Physik Department and Excellence Cluster Universe, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany
16
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell‘Università di Padova, Padua, Italy
17
INFN Padova, Padua, Italy
18
Physikalisches Institut, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
19
Physik Institut der Universität Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
* e-mail: grabmayr@uni-tuebingen.de
Received:
1
November
2017
Accepted:
16
April
2018
Published online:
18
May
2018
The Gerda collaboration is performing a sensitive search for neutrinoless double beta decay of at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy. The upgrade of the Gerda experiment from Phase I to Phase II has been concluded in December 2015. The first Phase II data release shows that the goal to suppress the background by one order of magnitude compared to Phase I has been achieved. Gerda is thus the first experiment that will remain “background-free” up to its design exposure (
). It will reach thereby a half-life sensitivity of more than
year within 3 years of data collection. This paper describes in detail the modifications and improvements of the experimental setup for Phase II and discusses the performance of individual detector components.
© The Author(s), 2018