@article{a972b157842042b993fda1d214f1600c,
title = "Observation of two-neutrino double electron capture in 124Xe with XENON1T",
abstract = "Two-neutrino double electron capture (2?ECEC) is a second-order weak-interaction process with a predicted half-life that surpasses the age of the Universe by many orders of magnitude1. Until now, indications of 2?ECEC decays have only been seen for two isotopes2–5, 78Kr and 130Ba, and instruments with very low background levels are needed to detect them directly with high statistical significance6,7. The 2?ECEC half-life is an important observable for nuclear structure models8–14 and its measurement represents a meaningful step in the search for neutrinoless double electron capture—the detection of which would establish the Majorana nature of the neutrino and would give access to the absolute neutrino mass15–17. Here we report the direct observation of 2?ECEC in 124Xe with the XENON1T dark-matter detector. The significance of the signal is 4.4 standard deviations and the corresponding half-life of 1.8 × 1022 years (statistical uncertainty, 0.5 × 1022 years; systematic uncertainty, 0.1 × 1022 years) is the longest measured directly so far. This study demonstrates that the low background and large target mass of xenon-based dark-matter detectors make them well suited for measuring rare processes and highlights the broad physics reach of larger next-generation experiments18–20.",
author = "{XENON Collaboration*} and E. Aprile and J. Aalbers and F. Agostini and M. Alfonsi and L. Althueser and Amaro, {F. D.} and M. Anthony and Antochi, {V. C.} and F. Arneodo and L. Baudis and B. Bauermeister and Benabderrahmane, {M. L.} and T. Berger and Breur, {P. A.} and A. Brown and A. Brown and E. Brown and S. Bruenner and G. Bruno and R. Budnik and C. Capelli and Cardoso, {J. M.R.} and D. Cichon and D. Coderre and Colijn, {A. P.} and J. Conrad and Cussonneau, {J. P.} and Decowski, {M. P.} and {de Perio}, P. and {Di Gangi}, P. and {Di Giovanni}, A. and S. Diglio and A. Elykov and G. Eurin and J. Fei and Ferella, {A. D.} and A. Fieguth and W. Fulgione and Rosso, {A. Gallo} and M. Galloway and F. Gao and M. Garbini and L. Grandi and Z. Greene and C. Hasterok and E. Hogenbirk and J. Howlett and M. Iacovacci and R. Itay and F. Joerg",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgements We thank J. Men{\'e}ndez for sharing his expertise in the theory of double β decay. We gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation, Swiss National Science Foundation, German Ministry for Education and Research, Max Planck Gesellschaft, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), NLeSC, Weizmann Institute of Science, I-CORE, Pazy-Vatat, Initial Training Network Invisibles (Marie Curie Actions, PITNGA-2011-289442), Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Region des Pays de la Loire, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Kavli Foundation, Abeloe Graduate Fellowship, and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. Data processing was performed using infrastructures of the Open Science Grid and European Grid Initiative. We are grateful to Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso for hosting and supporting the XENON project. B.K. was also at Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland. S.K. is also at Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan. J.A.M.L. is also at Coimbra Polytechnic – ISEC, Coimbra, Portugal. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.",
year = "2019",
month = apr,
day = "25",
doi = "10.1038/s41586-019-1124-4",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "568",
pages = "532--535",
journal = "Nature Cell Biology",
issn = "1465-7392",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "7753",
}