Energy Resolution Overview in NEXT Detectors

Neutrinos have shown a glimpse of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) due to experimental confirmation of neutrino oscillations. Current neutrino research aims to study the nature of the neutrino mass, more specifically whether the neutrino is a Dirac or Majorana particle. If Majorana in nature, the neutrino would be its own antiparticle, providing a rich phenomenological study of BSM scenarios. To test this hypothesis, the NEXT (Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon TPC) collaboration utilizes high-pressure xenon time projection chamber detectors to look for neutrinoless double-beta decays (0vββ), a telltale sign of Majorana neutrinos. If allowed by Nature, 0vββ would be one of the rarest interactions in the universe that requires state-of-the-art detectors with very powerful background rejection and energy resolutions at the sub-percent level. For the Xe-136 isotope employed in NEXT, the signal peak occurs at 2.5 MeV and we expect to achieve an energy resolution below 1% FWHM as demonstrated by the NEXT-White (NEW) detector, the predecessor of the upcoming NEXT-100. In this presentation, we will cover how the energy resolution is studied at the different detector generations of NEXT; namely, we will focus on NEW, NEXT-100, and future NEXT detectors.