Scintillating bolometric technique for the neutrino-less double beta decay search: The LUCIFER/CUPID-0 experiment

CUPID is a proposed future tonne-scale bolometric neutrino-less double beta decay (0νββ) experiment to probe the Majorana nature of neutrinos and discover lepton number violation in the so-called inverted hierarchy region of the neutrino mass. In order to improve the sensitivity with respect to the current bolometric experiments, the source mass must be increased and the backgrounds in the region of interest must be dramatically reduced. The background suppression can be achieved discriminating β/γ against α events by means of the different light yield produced in the interactions within a scintillating bolometer. The increase in the number of 0νββ emitters demands for crystals grown with enriched material. LUCIFER/CUPID-0, the first demonstrator of CUPID, aims at running the first array of enriched scintillating Zn82Se bolometers (total mass of about 7 kg of 82Se) with a background level as low as 10−3 counts/(keV kg y) in the energy region of interest. We present the results of the first measurement performed on three Zn82Se enriched scintillating bolometers operated deep underground in the Hall C of the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso.