This paper reports on the development of a technology involving 100 Mo-enriched scintillating bolometers, compatible with the goals of CUPID, a proposed nextgeneration bolometric experiment to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay. Large mass (∼ 1 kg), high optical quality, radiopure 100 Mo-containing zinc and lithium molybdate crystals have been produced and used to develop high performance single detector modules based on 0.2-0.4 kg scintillating bolometers. In particular, the energy resolution of the lithium molybdate detectors near the Q-value of the doublebeta transition of 100 Mo (3034 keV) is 4-6 keV FWHM. The rejection of the α-induced dominant background above 2.6 MeV is better than 8σ . Less than 10 µBq/kg activity of 232 Th ( 228 Th) and 226 Ra in the crystals is ensured by boule recrystallization. The potential of 100 Mo-enriched scintillating bolometers to perform high sensitivity double-beta decay searches has been demonstrated with only 10 kg×d exposure: the two neutrino double-beta decay half-life of 100 Mo has been measured with the up-to-date highest accuracy as T 1/2 = [6.90 ± 0.15(stat.) ± 0.37(syst.)] × 10 18 years. Both crystallization and detector technologies favor lithium molybdate, which has been selected for the ongoing construction of the CUPID-0/Mo demonstrator, containing several kg of 100 Mo.

CUPID-Mo is a bolometric experiment to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νβ β ) of 100 Mo. In this article, we detail the CUPID-Mo detector concept, assema e-mail: andrea.giuliani@csnsm.in2p3.fr bly, installation in the underground laboratory in Modane in 2018, and provide results from the first datasets. The demonstrator consists of an array of 20 scintillating bolometers comprised of 100 Mo-enriched 0.2 kg Li 2 MoO 4 crystals. The

Large lithium molybdate (Li 2 MoO 4 ) crystal boules were produced by using the low thermal gradient Czochralski growth technique from deeply purified molybdenum. A small sample from one of the boules was preliminary characterized in terms of Xray-induced and thermally-excited luminescence. A large cylindrical crystalline element (with a size of ⊘40 × 40 mm) was used to fabricate a scintillating bolometer, which was operated aboveground at ∼ 15 mK by using a pulse-tube cryostat housing a highpower dilution refrigerator. The excellent detector performance in terms of energy resolution and α background suppression along with preliminary positive indications on the radiopurity of this material show the potentiality of Li 2 MoO 4 scintillating bolometers for low-counting experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay of 100 Mo.

opens the question of neutrino mass generation. Instead of having Dirac nature as charged leptons and quarks, the scale of neutrino masses could be well motivated by the Majorana theory [2,3]. In this scenario neutrinos could coincide with their antimatter partner [4, 5] which

We report the measurement of the two-neutrino double-beta ($$2\nu \beta \beta $$2νββ) decay of $$^{100}$$100Mo to the ground state of $$^{100}$$100Ru using lithium molybdate ($$\hbox {Li}_2^{\;\;100}\hbox {MoO}_4$$Li2100MoO4) scintillating bolometers. The detectors were developed for the CUPID-Mo program and operated at the EDELWEISS-III low background facility in the Modane underground laboratory (France). From a total exposure of 42.235 kg$$\times $$×day, the half-life of $$^{100}$$100Mo is determined to be $$T_{1/2}^{2\nu }=[7.12^{+0.18}_{-0.14}\,\mathrm {(stat.)}\pm 0.10\,\mathrm {(syst.)}]\times 10^{18}$$T1/22ν=[7.12-0.14+0.18(stat.)±0.10(syst.)]×1018 years. This is the most accurate determination of the $$2\nu \beta \beta $$2νββ half-life of $$^{100}$$100Mo to date.

A: Modern particle physics experiments call for high performance scintillation detectors with unique properties: radiation-resistant in high energy and astrophysics, highly radiopure, containing certain elements or enriched isotopes in astroparticle physics. The low-thermal gradient Czochralski (LTG CZ) crystal growth technique provides excellent quality large volume radiopure crystal scintillators. Absence of thermoelastic stress in the crystal and overheating of the melt in the LTG CZ method is particularly significant in production of crystalline materials with strong thermal anisotropic properties and low mechanical strength, with a very high yield of crystalline boules and low losses of initial charge, crucially important in production of crystal scintillators from enriched isotopes for double beta decay experiments. Here we discuss progress in development of the well known scintillators (Bi 4 Ge 3 O 12 (BGO), CdWO 4 , ZnWO 4 , CaMoO 4 , PbMoO 4 ), as well as R&D of new materials (ZnMoO 4 , Li 2 MoO 4 , Na 2 Mo 2 O 7 ) for the next generation experiments in particle physics.

The CUPID-Mo experiment to search for 0$$\nu \beta \beta $$ ν β β decay in $$^{100}$$ 100 Mo has been recently completed after about 1.5 years of operation at Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (France). It served as a demonstrator for CUPID, a next generation 0$$\nu \beta \beta $$ ν β β decay experiment. CUPID-Mo was comprised of 20 enriched $$\hbox {Li}_{{2}}$$ Li 2 $$^{100}$$ 100 $$\hbox {MoO}_4$$ MoO 4 scintillating calorimeters, each with a mass of $$\sim 0.2$$ ∼ 0.2  kg, operated at $$\sim 20$$ ∼ 20  mK. We present here the final analysis with the full exposure of CUPID-Mo ($$^{100}$$ 100 Mo exposure of 1.47 $$\hbox {kg} \times \hbox {year}$$ kg × year ) used to search for lepton number violation via 0$$\nu \beta \beta $$ ν β β decay. We report on various analysis improvements since the previous result on a subset of data, reprocessing all data with these new techniques. We observe zero events in the region of interest and set a new limit on the $$^{100}$$ 100 Mo 0$$\nu \beta \beta $$ ν β β decay half-life of $$T_{1/2}^{0\nu }$$ T 1 / 2 0 ν $$> {1.8}\times 10^{24}$$ > 1.8 × 10 24  year (stat. + syst.) at 90% CI. Under the light Majorana neutrino exchange mechanism this corresponds to an effective Majorana neutrino mass of $$\left<m_{\beta \beta }\right>$$ m β β  $$<~{(0.28{-}0.49)} $$ < ( 0.28 - 0.49 )  eV, dependent upon the nuclear matrix element utilized.

CUPID-Mo is a cryogenic detector array designed to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) of 100Mo. It uses 20 scintillating 100Mo-enriched Li2MoO4 bolometers instrumented with Ge light detectors to perform active suppression of α backgrounds, drastically reducing the expected background in the 0νββ signal region. As a result, pileup events and small detector instabilities that mimic normal signals become non-negligible potential backgrounds. These types of events can in principle be eliminated based on their signal shapes, which are different from those of regular bolometric pulses. We show that a purely data-driven principal component analysis based approach is able to filter out these anomalous events, without the aid of detector response simulations.