Finding the Dominant Mechanism Contributing to Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay
Although the neutrinoless double-beta decay has not been experimentally proven yet, there is work undergoing to improve the theoretical description of the decay.
In this work, we computed the nuclear matrix elements using the shell model techniques and the electron phase-space factors for several nuclei of interest. The latter were computed using three different descriptions for the potential generated by the nucleus and the electronic shells, accounting for finer ingredients like the finite size of the nucleus and the screening effect of the electrons.
Using the above results and the experimental limits for the half-life times, upper bounds for the neutrino mass were obtained. To isolate the dominant mechanism that could possibly drive the neutrinoless double-beta decay, we investigated the ratio of the predicted half-lives, and the shapes of the calculated angular and energy distributions of the emitted electrons.