Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2015) 130: 232
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2015-15232-0

Regular Article

The nature of massive neutrinos and multiple mechanisms in neutrinoless double-beta decay

CP3-Origins & the Danish Institute for Advanced Study Danish IAS, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230, Odense M, Denmark

^* e-mail: meroni@cp3-origins.net

Received: 30 May 2015
Accepted: 16 October 2015
Published online: 19 November 2015

Abstract

Determining the nature --Dirac or Majorana-- of massive neutrinos is one of the most pressing and challenging problems in the field of neutrino physics. We discuss how one can possibly extract information on the couplings, if any, which might be involved in -decay using a multi-isotope approach. We investigate as well the potential of combining data on the half-lives of nuclides with largely different Nuclear Matrix Elements such as ¹³⁶Xe and of one or more of the four nuclei ⁷⁶Ge, ⁸²Se, ¹⁰⁰Mo and ¹³⁰Te, for discriminating between different pairs of noninterfering or interfering mechanisms of -decay. The case studies do not extend to the evaluation of the theoretical uncertainties of the results, due to the nuclear matrix elements calculations and other causes.