Quest for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay of $^{130}$Te with the CUORE Detector

The CUORE experiment, in the advanced stages of construction at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), aims to search for $0\nu\beta\beta$ decay of $^{130}$Te with unprecedented sensitivity: \mbox{$T_{1/2}^{0\nu}=9.5 \times 10^{25}$ yr} at $90\%$ C.L. The detector will consist of 19 towers, each comprising 13 planes of four, 125~cm$^{3}$, cubic TeO$_{2}$ crystals. This amounts to a total mass of 206~kg of $^{130}$Te. When cooled to an operating temperature of \mbox{$\sim 10$~mK} such crystals function as highly sensitive bolometers with energy resolution better than $5\,$keV demonstrated near the $0\nu\beta\beta$ decay Q-value (\mbox{2527.518 $\pm$ 0.013~keV}). In this talk I will describe the expected reach of CUORE considering the rigorous cleaning, materials handling, and ultra-pure assembly techniques developed by the collaboration. I will also report on the status of CUORE-0, a single CUORE-like tower where many of these background mitigation techniques were deployed during assembly. CUORE-0 represents a new $0\nu\beta\beta$ experiment which is already operating at LNGS and will surpass the sensitivity of the previous generation experiment (Cuoricino) before CUORE begins operating.