A study of CdZnTe coplanar and pixel detectors for neutrinoless double beta decay

摘要

We studied the performance of coplanar and pixel CdZnTe detectors that could potentially observe neutrino-less double beta decays. Some radioactive isotopes contained in the CdZnTe crystal are expected to decay by neutrino-less double beta decay if the neutrinos behaved like Majorana particles as opposed to Dirac particles by violating the conservation of lepton number. This rare mode of decay has never been observed with adequate statistics before and there is strong incentive to further improve the energy resolution of the detector to accurately record MeV range energy deposition by two beta electrons. We are currently studying the coplanar grid structure to achieve better energy resolution but concurrently we are also exploring the tracking capability of pixilated CdZnTe detectors of which results are also briefly reported here.