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Neutrinoless double beta decay

Study of the nuclear double beta decay is a subject of the current intensive activity, both experimental and theoretical. The neutrinoless mode of this process of the double beta decay with emission of two electrons only is related to physics beyond the Standard Model. It requires the existence of the lepton number violating massive Majorana neutrinos and/or right-handed current admixture to the standard V-A weak interaction. The other possibility is to extend the SM to the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM).

From the explicit dependence of the neutrinoless double beta decay transition probability one can deduce immediately that the transition depends on different nuclear matrix elements, which have to be calculated reliably if we expect reliable limits on the nonstandard physics parameters like the electron neutrino mass, the mixing angle between the vector bosons mediating left- and right-handed weak interactions and the mass ratio of these bosons.




2000-04-17