Progress in Imaging of Barium Atoms in Solid Xenon at CSU

Interest in neutrinoless double beta decay searches has increased in recent decades to probe whether the neutrino is its own anti-particle or not. Recent searches in enriched liquid Xenon have occurred in the EXO experiment, with plans to achieve greater sensitivity in a ton-scale detector in the nEXO experiment. In liquid 136Xe, double beta decay leaves behind a daughter barium atom. If this daughter can be identified and tagged, the only remaining background in the detector will be 2$\nu \beta \beta $ decay. To this end, imaging techniques of barium in solid xenon (SXe) are being developed and improved at Colorado State University that utilize scanning a focused laser beam over the Ba and SXe deposit. Images of individual barium atoms in different SXe matrix sites will be presented, and progress toward imaging of individual Ba$+$ ions in SXe will be reported.