The CUORE experiment, a ton-scale cryogenic bolometer array, recently began operation at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. The array represents a significant advancement in this technology, and in this work we apply it for the first time to a high-sensitivity search for a lepton-number-violating process: ^{130}Te neutrinoless double-beta decay. Examining a total TeO_{2} exposure of 86.3 kg yr, characterized by an effective energy resolution of (7.7±0.5)  keV FWHM and a background in the region of interest of (0.014±0.002)  counts/(keV kg yr), we find no evidence for neutrinoless double-beta decay. Including systematic uncertainties, we place a lower limit on the decay half-life of T_{1/2}^{0ν}(^{130}Te)>1.3×10^{25}  yr (90% C.L.); the median statistical sensitivity of this search is 7.0×10^{24}  yr. Combining this result with those of two earlier experiments, Cuoricino and CUORE-0, we find T_{1/2}^{0ν}(^{130}Te)>1.5×10^{25}  yr (90% C.L.), which is the most stringent limit to date on this decay. Interpreting this result as a limit on the effective Majorana neutrino mass, we find m_{ββ}<(110-520)  meV, where the range reflects the nuclear matrix element estimates employed.

The ATLAS IBL CollaborationDuring the shutdown of the CERN Large Hadron Collider in 2013-2014, an additional pixel layer was installed between the existing Pixel detector of the ATLAS experiment and a new, smaller radius beam pipe. The motivation for this new pixel layer, the Insertable B-Layer (IBL), was to maintain or improve the robustness and performance of the ATLAS tracking system, given the higher instantaneous and integrated luminosities realised following the shutdown. Because of the extreme radiation and collision rate environment, several new radiation-tolerant sensor and electronic technologies were utilised for this layer. This paper reports on the IBL construction and integration prior to its operation in the ATLAS detector.The ATLAS [1] general purpose detector is used for the study of proton-proton (pp) and heavy-ion collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [2]. It successfully collected data at pp collision energies of 7 and 8 TeV in the period of 2010-2012, known as Run 1. Following an LHC shutdown in 2013-2014 (LS1), it has collected data since 2015 at a pp collision energy of 13 TeV (the so-called Run 2).The ATLAS inner tracking detector (ID) [1, 3] provides charged particle tracking with high efficiency in the pseudorapidity 1 range of |η| < 2.5. With increasing radial distance from the interaction region, it consists of silicon pixel and micro-strip detectors, followed by a transition radiation tracker (TRT) detector, all surrounded by a superconducting solenoid providing a 2 T magnetic field.The original ATLAS pixel detector [4,5], referred to in this paper as the Pixel detector, was the innermost part of the ID during Run 1. It consists of three barrel layers (named the B-Layer, Layer 1 and Layer 2 with increasing radius) and three disks on each side of the interaction region, to guarantee at least three space points over the full tracking |η| range. It was designed to operate for the Phase-I period of the LHC, that is with a peak luminosity of 1 × 10 34 cm −2 s −1 and an integrated luminosity of approximately 340 fb −1 corresponding to a TID of up to 50 MRad 2 and a fluence of up to 1 × 10 15 n eq /cm 2 NIEL. However, for luminosities exceeding 2 × 10 34 cm −2 s −1 , which are now expected during the Phase-I operation, the read-out efficiency of the Pixel layers will deteriorate. This paper describes the construction and surface integration of an additional pixel layer, the Insertable B-Layer (IBL) [6], installed during the LS1 shutdown between the B-Layer and a new smaller radius beam pipe. The main motivations of the IBL were to maintain the full ID tracking performance and robustness during Phase-I operation, despite read-out bandwidth limitations of the Pixel layers (in particular the B-Layer) at the expected Phase-I peak luminosity, and accumulated radiation damage to the silicon sensors and front-end electronics. The IBL is designed to operate until the end of Phase-I, when a full tracker upgrade is planned [7] for high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) operation from approximately ...

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