Neutrinoless double beta decay

The study of neutrino properties is one of the fundamental challenges in Particle Physics nowadays. Fifty years of neutrino investigations established that neutrinos are massive particles but the absolute scale has not yet been measured. Moreover the true nature of the neutrino mass is still unknown. Is the neutrino its own antiparticle, as proposed by Majorana in 1937? The only way to probe the neutrino nature and provide a measurement of its mass is through the observation of Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay, a very rare, spontaneous nuclear transition which emits two electrons and no neutrinos. An overview of present status and future perpectives of 0vββ experimental searches is given. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence