The SNO plus Experiment for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay

SNO+ is a large scale liquid scintillator based experiment located 2 km underground in a mine near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The detector is reusing the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory facility to investigate the Majorana nature of neutrinos through the search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of Te-130. In the double-beta phase about 0.3% natural tellurium will be loaded in the 780 tonnes of liquid scintillator. This corresponds to nearly 800 kg of Te-130. After several years of data taking, it is expected to reach a sensitivity on the effective Majorana neutrino mass below 100 meV. Recent development has suggested that higher loadings, up to few percent, of natural tellurium are possible by which SNO+ could approach, in the near future, the bottom of the inverted hierarchy. Additionally, designed as a general purpose neutrino experiment, SNO+ can measure reactor anti-neutrino oscillations, geo anti-neutrinos in a geologically-interesting location, solar neutrinos and watch supernova neutrinos. A first commissioning phase with the detector filled with water will start at the end of 2014, while the double-beta decay phase is foreseen for the beginning of 2016.