Narrow Results

Nuclear double beta decay, an extremely rare radioactive decay process, is - in one of its variants - one of the most exciting means of research into particle physics beyond the standard model. The large progress in sensitivity of experiments searching for neutrinoless double beta decay in the last two decades - based largely on the use of large amounts of enriched source material in "active source experiments" - has lead to the observation of the occurrence of this process in nature (on a 6.4 sigma level), with the largest half-life ever observed for a nuclear decay process (2.2×10²⁵ y). This has fundamental consequences for particle physics - violation of lepton number, Majorana nature of the neutrino. These results are independent of any information on nuclear matrix elements (NME)*. It further leads to sharp restrictions for SUSY theories, sneutrino mass, right-handed W-boson mass, superheavy neutrino masses, composite-ness, leptoquarks, violation of Lorentz invariance and equivalence principle in the neutrino sector.

The masses of light-neutrinos are found to be degenerate, and to be at least 0.22±0.02eV. This fixes the contribution of neutrinos as hot dark matter to ≥4.7% of the total observed dark matter. The neutrino mass determined might solve also the dark energy puzzle.

Neutrinoless nuclear double 0νββ decay, recently experimentally observed for ⁷⁶Ge on a confidence level of > 6 σ, has fundamental consequences for particle physics - violation of (total) lepton number, Majorana nature of the neutrino. It further leads to sharp restrictions for SUSY theories, sneutrino mass, right-handed W-boson mass, superheavy neutrino masses, compositeness, leptogenesis, violation of Lorentz violation and equivalence principle in the neutrino sector.

The masses of light neutrinos follow to be degenerate, and to be at least 0.22 ± 0.02 eV. This fixed the contribution of neutrinos as hot dark matter to ≥ 4.7% of the total observed dark matter. The neutrino mass determined might also solve the dark energy puzzle.

The observation of 0νββ decay is naturally a great challenge for future experiments, in particular also with other 0νββ - emitter isotopes. There are several important experiments under construction. Present experiments have hardly a chance to reach the sensitivity required for confirmation - although sometimes this impression is given (e.g. by unproperly comparing 1.5 σ limits (of CUORICINO etc.) with the 6σ result obtained for ⁷⁶Ge.

The lensing data of the galaxy cluster Abell 1689 can be explained by an isothermal fermion model with a mass of 1-2 eV. The best candidate is the 1.5 eV neutrino; its mass will be searched down to 0.2 eV in KATRIN 2015. If its righthanded (sterile) modes were created too, there is 20% neutrino hot dark matter. Their condensation on clusters explains the reionization of the intercluster gas without Pop. III stars. Baryonic structure formation is achieved by gravitional hydrodynamics alone, without dark matter trigger.