Reexamining the light neutrino exchange mechanism of the 0νββ decay with left- and right-handed leptonic and hadronic currents

Abstract

The extension of the Majorana neutrino mass mechanism of the neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) with the inclusion of right-handed leptonic and hadronic currents is revisited. While only the exchange of light neutrinos is assumed, the s_(1/2) and p_(1/2) states of emitted electrons as well as recoil corrections to the nucleon currents are taken into account. Within the standard approximations the decay rate is factorized into a sum of products of kinematical phase-space factors, nuclear matrix elements, and the fundamental parameters that characterize the lepton number violation. Unlike in the previous treatments, the induced pseudoscalar term of hadron current is included, resulting in additional nuclear matrix elements. An improved numerical computation of the phase-space factors is presented, based on the exact Dirac wave functions of the s_(1/2) and p_(1/2) electrons with finite nuclear size and electron screening taken into account. The dependence of values of these phase-space factors on the different approximation schemes used in evaluation of electron wave functions is discussed. The upper limits for effective neutrino mass and the parameters ⟨λ⟩ and ⟨η⟩ characterizing the right-handed current mechanism are deduced from data on the 0νββ decay of ^(76)Ge and ^(136)Xe using nuclear matrix elements calculated within the nuclear shell model and quasiparticle random phase approximation. The differential decay rates, i.e., the angular correlations and the single electron energy distributions for various combinations of the total lepton number violating parameters that can help to disentangle the possible mechanism, are described and discussed.

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