CUORE sensitivity to 0 decay

Abstract

We report a study of the CUORE sensitivity to neutrinoless double beta (0) decay. We used a Bayesian analysis based on a toy Monte Carlo (MC) approach to extract the exclusion sensitivity to the 0 decay half-life (T1/20ν) at 90 % credibility interval (CI) – i.e. the interval containing the true value of T1/20ν with 90 % probability – and the 3σ discovery sensitivity. We consider various background levels and energy resolutions, and describe the influence of the data division in subsets with different background levels. If the background level and the energy resolution meet the expectation, CUORE will reach a 90 % CI exclusion sensitivity of 2 · 10 25 year with 3 months, and 9 · 10 25 year with 5 years of live time. Under the same conditions, the discovery sensitivity after 3 months and 5 years will be 7 · 10 24 year and 4 · 10 25 year, respectively.