LEGEND-1000 Preconceptual Design Report

/ Authors

L. C. N. Abgrall, I. Abt, M. Agostini, A. Alexander, C. Andreoiu, G. Araujo, F. Avignone, W. Bae, A. Bakalyarov, M. Balata

and 253 more authors

M. Bantel, I. Barabanov, A. Barabash, P. Barbeau, C. Barton, P. Barton, L. Baudis, C. Bauer, E. Bernieri, L. Bezrukov, K. Bhimani, V. Biancacci, E. Blalock, A. Bolozdynya, S. Borden, B. Bos, E. Bossio, A. Boston, V. Bothe, R. Bouabid, S. Boyd, R. Brugnera, N. Burlac, M. Busch, A. Caldwell, T. Caldwell, R. Carney, C. Cattadori, Y. Chan, A. Chernogorov, C. Christofferson, P. Chu, M. Clark, T. Cohen, D. Combs, T. Comellato, R. Cooper, I. A. Costa, V. D’Andrea, J. Detwiler, A. D. Giacinto, N. Marco, J. Dobson, A. Drobizhev, M. Durand, F. Edzards, Y. Efremenko, S. Elliott, A. Engelhardt, L. Fajt, N. Faud, M. Febbraro, F. Ferella, D. Fields, F. Fischer, M. Fomina, H. Fox, J. Franchi, R. Gala, A. Galindo-Uribarri, A. Gangapshev, A. Garfagnini, Angelo Geraci, C. Gilbert, M. Gold, C. Gooch, K. Gradwohl, M. Green, G. Grinyer, A. Grobov, J. Gruszko, I. Guinn, V. Guiseppe, V. Gurentsov, Y. Gurov, K. Gusev, B. Hacket, F. Hagemann, J. Hakenmueller, M. Harańczyk, L. Hauertmann, C. Haufe, C. Hayward, B. Heffron, F. Henkes, R. Henning, D. H. Aguilar, J. Hinton, R. Hodak, H. Hoffmann, W. Hofmann, A. Hostiuc, J. Huang, M. Hult, M. Mirza, J. Jochum, R. Jones, D. Judson, M. Junker, J. Kaizer, V. Kazalov, Y. Kermaidic, H. Khushbakht, M. Kidd, T. Kihm, K. Kilgus, I. Kim, A. Klimenko, K. T. Knopfle, O. Kochetov, S. Konovalov, I. Kontul’, K. Kool, L. Kormos, V. Kornoukhov, M. Korosec, P. Krause, V. Kuzminov, J. M. L'opez-Castano, K. Lang, M. Laubenstein, E. Le'on, B. Lehnert, A. Leonhardt, A. Li, M. Lindner, I. Lippi, X. Liu, J. Liu, D. Loomba, A. Lubashevskiy, B. Lubsandorzhiev, N. Lusardi, Y. Muller, M. Macko, C. Macolino, B. Majorovits, F. Mamedov, W. Maneschg, L. Manzanillas, G. Marshall, R. Martin, E. Martín, R. Massarczyk, D. Mei, S. Meijer, S. Mertens, M. Misiaszek, E. Mondragón, M. Morella, B. Morgan, T. Mroz, D. Muenstermann, C. Nave, I. Nemchenok, M. Neuberger, T. Oli, G. O. Gann, G. Othman, V. Paluvsova, R. Panth, L. Papp, L. Paudel, K. Pelczar, J. P. Pérez, L. Pertoldi, W. Pettus, P. Piseri, A. Poon, P. Povinec, A. Pullia, D. Radford, Y. Ramachers, C. Ransom, L. Rauscher, M. Redchuk, A. Reine, S. Riboldi, K. Rielage, S. Rozov, E. Rukhadze, N. Rumyantseva, J. Runge, N. Ruof, R. Saakyan, S. Sailer, G. Salamanna, F. Salamida, D. Salvat, V. Sandukovsky, S. Schonert, A. Schultz, M. Schutt, D. Schaper, J. Schreiner, O. Schulz, M. Schuster, M. Schwarz, B. Schwingenheuer, O. Selivanenko, M. Shaflee, E. Shevchik, M. Shirchenko, Y. Shitov, H. Simgen, F. Šimkovic, M. Skorokhvatov, M. Slavíčková, K. Smolek, A. Smolnikov, J. Solomon, G. Song, K. Starosta, I. Stekl, M. Stommel, D. Stukov, R. Sumathi, D. Sweigart, K. Szczepaniec, L. Taffarello, D. Tagnani, R. Tayloe, D. Tedeschi, M. Turqueti, R. Varner, S. Vasilyev, A. Veresnikova, K. Vetter, C. Vignoli, C. Vogl, K. Sturm, D. Waters, J. Waters, W. Wei, C. Wiesinger, J. Wilkerson, M. Willers, C. Wiseman, M. Wójcik, V. Wu, W. Xu, E. Yakushev, T. Ye, C.-H. Yu, V. Yumatov, N. Zaretski, J. Zeman, I. Zhitnikov, D. Zinatulina, A. Zschocke, A. Zsigmond, K. Zuber, G. Zuzel

/ Abstract

We propose the construction of LEGEND-1000, the ton-scale Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless $\beta \beta$ Decay. This international experiment is designed to answer one of the highest priority questions in fundamental physics. It consists of 1000 kg of Ge detectors enriched to more than 90% in the $^{76}$Ge isotope operated in a liquid argon active shield at a deep underground laboratory. By combining the lowest background levels with the best energy resolution in the field, LEGEND-1000 will perform a quasi-background-free search and can make an unambiguous discovery of neutrinoless double-beta decay with just a handful of counts at the decay $Q$ value. The experiment is designed to probe this decay with a 99.7%-CL discovery sensitivity in the $^{76}$Ge half-life of $1.3\times10^{28}$ years, corresponding to an effective Majorana mass upper limit in the range of 9-21 meV, to cover the inverted-ordering neutrino mass scale with 10 yr of live time.