Once again, there is no signal of neutrinoless double beta decay, which would indicate that the neutrino has a Majorana mass.
This isn't necessarily decisive, because reasonable models of neutrinoless double beta decay rates for neutrinos with masses in the ballpark of what neutrino oscillation data and cosmology estimates would predict are still a few order of magnitude smaller than the ability of current experiments to detect (the predicted value is on the order of 10^28 years or more), although this due rule out less mainstream models of Majorana neutrinos which would predict much higher rates of neutrinoless double beta decay. But the consensus on non-detection from multiple experiments with different methods around the world does strongly discredit the one Russian experiment that claims to have seen this already many years ago, and it does deny advocates of Majorana mass for neutrinos any positive evidence that it exists.
We report the search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of 136Xe from the PandaX-4T experiment with a 3.7-tonne natural xenon target. The data reconstruction and the background modeling are optimized in the MeV energy region. A blind analysis is performed with data from the commissioning run and the first science run. No significant excess of signal over the background is observed. A lower limit on the half-life of 136Xe neutrinoless double-beta decay is established to be 2.1 × 10^24 ~ yr at the 90% confidence level, with a 136Xe exposure of 44.6 ~ kg⋅year. Our result represents the most stringent constraint from a natural xenon detector to date.
Is there any author-led movement to make a change like that? I imagine that paper authorship is what movie credits would be like if the only well-paying, stable job in film was Director. So many unscientific incentives in academia, I don't hold a lot of hope.
ReplyDeleteMovie credits are largely a product of unionization in the industry which results in industry-wide collective bargaining agreements that establish guidelines for them. Unless HEP unionizes, this is a long shot proposal. But, since some HEP scientists are unionized civil servants it isn't impossible
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