NEXT CRAB-0

The NEXT program intends to observe neutrinoless double beta decay, an extremely rare hypothetical decay mediated by Majorana neutrinos, using xenon gas time projection chambers. A readout technique called CRAB, camera readout and barium tagging, is being explored to replace the use of silicon photomultipliers with high speed optical cameras for enhanced tracking function without the radioactivity and system complexity of a traditional electronic tracking plane. This poster will present the status of CRAB-0, a prototype at the University of Texas at Arlington employing a Hamamatsu imagEM X2 EMCCD camera, a VUV image intensifier, and MgF2 optics, to perform low energy tracking in a 10 bar xenon gas TPC.