From nuclear physics to physics beyond the standard model: first evidence for lepton number violation and the Majorana character of neutrinos.

Nuclear double beta decay provides an extraordinarily broad potential to search for beyond-standard-model physics. The occurrence of the neutrinoless decay (0νββ) mode has fundamental consequences: first, the total lepton number is not conserved, and second, the neutrino is a Majorana particle. Furthermore, the measured effective mass provides an absolute scale of the neutrino mass spectrum. In addition, double beta experiments yield sharp restrictions for other beyond-standard-model physics. These include SUSY models (R-parity breaking and conserving), leptoquarks (leptoquark-Higgs coupling), compositeness, left-right symmetric models (right-handed W boson mass), test of special relativity and of the equivalence principle in the neutrino sector and others. First evidence for neutrinoless double beta decay was reported by the HEIDELBERG–MOSCOW experiment in 2001. The HEIDELBERG–MOSCOW experiment is by far the most sensitive 0νββ experiment since more than 10 years. It is operating 11 kg of enriched 76Ge in the GRAN SASSO Underground Laboratory. The analysis of the data taken from 2 August 1990–20 May 2003 is presented here. The collected statistics is 71.7 kg y. The background achieved in the energy region of the Q value for double beta decay is 0.11 events/kg y keV. The two-neutrino accompanied half-life is determined on the basis of more than 100 000 events to be 1.74 (+0.18, -0.16) x 10**21 years. The confidence level for the neutrinoless signal has been improved to a 4.2σ level. The half-life is T^(0ν)_(1/2)= 1.19 (+0.37, -0.23) x 10^25 years. The effective neutrino mass deduced is (0.2–0.6) eV (99.73% C.L.), with the consequence that neutrinos have degenerate masses. The sharp boundaries for other beyond SM physics, mentioned above, are comfortably competitive to the corresponding results from high-energy accelerators like TEVATRON, HERA, etc