Weak Interaction Discussion Group (WIDG) talk: Shilo Xia, Yale University, “Hunting for neutrinoless double beta decay and other rare-events with the EXO-200 detector”

Many experiments are looking for neutrinoless double beta decay (0υββ), a phenomenon that if discovered, would demonstrate the Majorana nature of neutrinos. I am going to talk about the motivation behind those searches, and the most recent result from EXO-200, a 200-kg detector aiming to detect 0υββ decay of the isotope 136 Xe, installed at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The EXO-200 experiment also has capacity for other rare-event searches like nucleon decay, whose result will be presented as well. The experience from EXO-200 is helping pave the way for a ton-scale next-generation experiment nEXO, with the goal of probing new physics and the mass of the neutrino.