Eur. Phys. J. C (2020) 80: 702
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8280-4

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Search for neutrinoless double beta decay of Zn and Zn with CUPID-0

¹ INFN-Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, 35020, Legnaro, Padua, Italy
² Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
³ Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Università di Roma, 00185, Rome, Italy
⁴ INFN-Sezione di Roma, 00185, Rome, Italy
⁵ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano-Bicocca, 20126, Milan, Italy
⁶ INFN-Sezione di Milano-Bicocca, 20126, Milan, Italy
⁷ INFN-Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Assergi, 67010, L’Aquila, Italy
⁸ Gran Sasso Science Institute, 67100, L’Aquila, Italy
⁹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Genova, 16146, Genoa, Italy
¹⁰ INFN-Sezione di Genova, 16146, Genoa, Italy
¹¹ Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS/IN2P3, IJCLab, 91405, Orsay, France
¹² IRFU, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
¹³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA
¹⁴ Present address: Fundacion ARAID and Universidad de Zaragoza, C/Pedro Cerbuna 12, 50009, Saragoza, Spain
¹⁵ Present address: Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada
¹⁶ Present address: Physik Department, Technische Universität München, 85748, Garching, Germany
¹⁷ Present address: Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, 80805, Munich, Germany

^* e-mail: laura.cardani@roma1.infn.it

Received: 22 March 2020
Accepted: 23 July 2020
Published online: 5 August 2020

Abstract

CUPID-0 is the first pilot experiment of CUPID, a next-generation project searching for neutrinoless double beta decay. In its first scientific run, CUPID-0 operated 26 ZnSe cryogenic calorimeters coupled to light detectors in the underground Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. In this work, we analyzed a ZnSe exposure of 11.34 kg year to search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of Zn and for the neutrinoless positron-emitting electron capture of Zn. We found no evidence for these decays and set 90 credible interval limits of (Zn) > 1.6 year and (Zn) > 1.2 year, surpassing by more than one order of magnitude the previous experimental results (Belli et al. in J Phys G 38(11):115107, https://doi.org/10.1088/0954-3899/38/11/115107, 2011).