Sensitivity and discovery potential of the proposed nEXO experiment to neutrinoless double- β decay

Abstract

The next-generation Enriched Xenon Observatory (nEXO) is a proposed experiment to search for neutrinoless double-β (0νββ) decay in Xe136 with a target half-life sensitivity of approximately 1028 yr using 5×103 kg of isotopically enriched liquid-xenon in a time projection chamber. This improvement of two orders of magnitude in sensitivity over current limits is obtained by a significant increase of the Xe136 mass, the monolithic and homogeneous configuration of the active medium, and the multiparameter measurements of the interactions enabled by the time projection chamber. The detector concept and anticipated performance are presented based upon demonstrated realizable background rates.