A Search for the Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay of Xenon-136 with Improved Sensitivity from Denoising

Abstract

The EXO-200 detector is designed to search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of 136Xe. ββ0ν decay, if it occurs in nature, would demonstrate the fundamental nature of neutrino mass; set the mass scale of the neutrino sector; and demonstrate lepton number non-conservation. Since the ββ0ν decay produces a monoenergetic peak, the energy resolution of the detector is of fundamental importance for the sensitivity of the experiment. The present work describes a new analysis technique which improves the energy resolution of EXO-200 through a combination of waveform denoising and weighting of waveform components based on their expected signal-to-noise ratio. With this method, the energy resolution of the detector is improved by 21% and the expected background in the 2σ region of interest is reduced by 32%. Applying this technique to 99.8 kg*years of exposure collected by EXO-200 between October 5, 2011 and September 1, 2013, we find no statistically significant evidence for the presence of ββ0ν in the data. We set a half-life limit T1/2 > 1.1 × 1025 years at 90% confidence. We also describe further improvements which could impact the energy resolution of EXO-200, and consider implications for the planned nEXO experiment.