Ramon M Salazar: "The NEMO Project: An Underground Search for the Nature of Neutrinos"

The discovery that neutrinos have mass has increased interest towards questions surrounding their nature. Isotopes which undergo double beta decay offer a practical way to learn more about these particles. If this decay is observed to occur without the emission of neutrinos (neutrinoless double beta decay), it would imply that neutrinos are Majorana particles, and it would allow for the measurement of their effective mass. The NEMO project is focused on the search for neutrinoless double beta decay using a unique approach which combines tracking, calorimetry, and time-of-flight measurements. Its current effort towards this goal is the SuperNEMO demonstrator, which is on its final phase of construction at the Modane Underground Laboratory under the French-Italian Alps. It is motivated by the success of its predecessor, the NEMO-3 detector, which ran from 2003 to 2011 in the same location. The results of NEMO-3 as well as the projected improvements estimated for SuperNEMO will be presented.