by Dr Jordan Myslik
(Lawrence Berkeley Lab)

The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is an experiment searching for neutrinoless double-beta decays of germanium-76. This lepton-number-violating process is connected to the nature, absolute scale, and hierarchy of the neutrino masses. The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR consists of two modular arrays of natural and 76Ge-enriched germanium detectors totalling 44.1 kg, located on the 4850' level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota.

While seeking to demonstrate backgrounds low enough to justify a tonne-scale experiment and the feasibility of its construction, the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR's ultra-low backgrounds and excellent energy resolution also allow it to probe additional physics beyond the Standard Model. This talk will discuss the physics and the design elements of the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR, its results to date, and its future prospects, along with the plans for a future 1 tonne germanium-76 neutrinoless double-beta decay experiment.