Abstract
SuperNEMO is a double-beta decay experiment, which will employ the successful tracker-calorimeter technique used in the recently completed NEMO-3 experiment. SuperNEMO will implement 100 kg of double-beta decay cisotope, reaching a sensitivity to the neutrinoless double-beta decay (0 nu beta beta) half-life of the order of 10(26) yr, corresponding to a Majorana neutrino mass of 50-100 meV.
One of the main goals and challenges of the SuperNEMO detector development programme has been to reach a calorimeter energy resolution, Delta E/E, around 3%/root E(MeV) sigma, or 7%/root E(MeV) FWHM (full width at half maximum), using a calorimeter composed of large volume plastic scintillator blocks coupled to photomultiplier tubes. We describe the R&D programme and the final design of the SuperNEMO calorimeter that has met this challenging goal. (C) 2017 The Authors.
Published by Elsevier B.V.