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Title: 138Ba(d,alpha) Study of States in 136Cs: Implications for New Physics Searches with Xenon Detectors
We used the 138Baðd; αÞ reaction to carry out an in-depth study of states in 136Cs, up to around 2.5 MeV. In this Letter, we place emphasis on hitherto unobserved states below the first 1þ level, which are important in the context of solar neutrino and fermionic dark matter (FDM) detection in large-scale xenon-based experiments. We identify for the first time candidate metastable states in 136Cs, which would allow a realtime detection of solar neutrino and FDM events in xenon detectors, with high background suppression. Our results are also compared with shell-model calculations performed with three Hamiltonians that were previously used to evaluate the nuclear matrix element (NME) for 136Xe neutrinoless double beta decay.We find that one of these Hamiltonians, which also systematically underestimates the NME compared with the others, dramatically fails to describe the observed low-energy 136Cs spectrum, while the other two show reasonably good agreement.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2110365
PAR ID:
10515498
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more » ; ; ; ; « less
Publisher / Repository:
AIP
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Physical review letters
Edition / Version:
1
Volume:
131
Issue:
5
ISSN:
0031-9007
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1-6
Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
Double-beta decay, nuclear structure
Format(s):
Medium: X Size: 0.6 MB Other: pdf
Size(s):
0.6 MB
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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