Measurement of the ${}^{136}$Xe two-neutrino double beta decay half-life via direct background subtraction in NEXT
Creators: name: NEXT Collaboration
name: Novella, P.
name: Sorel, M.
name: Usón, A.
name: Adams, C.
name: Almazán, H.
name: Álvarez, V.
name: Aparicio, B.
name: Aranburu, A. I.
name: Arazi, L.
name: Arnquist, I. J.
name: Ayet, S.
name: Azevedo, C. D. R.
name: Bailey, K.
name: Ballester, F.
name: Benlloch-Rodríguez, J. M.
name: Borges, F. I. G. M.
name: Bounasser, S.
name: Byrnes, N.
name: Cárcel, S.
name: Carrión, J. V.
name: Cebrián, S.
name: Church, E.
name: Conde, C. A. N.
name: Contreras, T.
name: Cossío, F. P.
name: Denisenko, A. A.
name: Díaz, G.
name: Díaz, J.
name: Dickel, T.
name: Escada, J.
name: Esteve, R.
name: Fahs, A.
name: Felkai, R.
name: Fernandes, L. M. P.
name: Ferrario, P.
name: Ferreira, A. L.
name: Foss, F. W.
name: Freitas, E. D. C.
name: Freixa, Z.
name: Generowicz, J.
name: Goldschmidt, A.
name: Gómez-Cadenas, J. J.
name: González, R.
name: González-Díaz, D.
name: Guenette, R.
name: Gutiérrez, R. M.
name: Haefner, J.
name: Hafidi, K.
name: Hauptman, J.
name: Henriques, C. A. O.
name: Morata, J. A. Hernando
name: Herrero-Gómez, P.
name: Herrero, V.
name: Ho, J.
name: Ifergan, Y.
name: Jones, B. J. P.
name: Kekic, M.
name: Labarga, L.
name: Laing, A.
name: Larizgoitia, L.
name: Lebrun, P.
name: Gutierrez, D. Lopez
name: López-March, N.
name: Losada, M.
name: Mano, R. D. P.
name: Martín-Albo, J.
name: Martínez, A.
name: Martínez-Lema, G.
name: Martínez-Vara, M.
name: McDonald, A. D.
name: Meziani, Z. E.
name: Mistry, K.
name: Monrabal, F.
name: Monteiro, C. M. B.
name: Mora, F. J.
name: Vidal, J. Muñoz
name: Navarro, K.
name: Nygren, D. R.
name: Oblak, E.
name: Odriozola-Gimeno, M.
name: Palmeiro, B.
name: Para, A.
name: Pérez, J.
name: Querol, M.
name: Raymond, A.
name: Redwine, A. B.
name: Renner, J.
name: Ripoll, L.
name: Rivilla, I.
name: García, Y. Rodríguez
name: Rodríguez, J.
name: Rogero, C.
name: Rogers, L.
name: Romeo, B.
name: Romo-Luque, C.
name: Santos, F. P.
name: Santos, J. M. F. dos
name: Simón, A.
name: Stanford, C.
name: Teixeira, J. M. R.
name: Thapa, P.
name: Toledo, J. F.
name: Torrent, J.
name: Veloso, J. F. C. A.
name: Vuong, T. T.
name: Webb, R.
name: White, J. T.
name: Woodruff, K.
name: Yahlali, N.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex)
subject: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
subject: Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We report a measurement of the half-life of the ${}^{136}$Xe two-neutrino double beta decay performed with a novel direct background subtraction technique. The analysis relies on the data collected with the NEXT-White detector operated with ${}^{136}$Xe-enriched and ${}^{136}$Xe-depleted xenon, as well as on the topology of double-electron tracks. With a fiducial mass of only 3.5 kg of Xe, a half-life of $2.34^{+0.80}_{-0.46}\textrm{(stat)}^{+0.30}_{-0.17}\textrm{(sys)}\times10^{21}~\textrm{yr}$ is derived from the background-subtracted energy spectrum. The presented technique demonstrates the feasibility of unique background-model-independent neutrinoless double beta decay searches.
description: 9 pages, 7 figures, and 1 appendix