NPA (Nuclear Particle Astrophysics) Seminar: Jonathan Engel, UNC, “Double-Beta Decay Matrix Elements in the Next Five Years”

Reducing the uncertainty in the matrix elements that govern double-beta decay is one of the goals of the new DOE Topical Collaboration for Nuclear Theory in Double-Beta Decay and Fundamental Symmetries. I discuss the collaboration’s efforts, now getting underway, to use ab initio nuclear structure theory to obtain more accurate matrix elements with real error bars. The calculations are difficult, but new many-body methods and computational resources should make them possible.