DOUBLE BETA DECAY

Almost exactly seventy years ago and only one year before his tragic disappearance the ingenious idea of Ettore Majorana is becoming one of the most important step in the development of fundamental physics. The problem of the nature of the neutrino, namely if it is a massless Dirac particle different from its antineutrino or a Majorana particle with finite mass, is discussed. In fact the recent results showing the presence of neutrino oscillations clearly indicates that the difference between the squared mass of neutrinos of different flavours is finite. Neutrinoless double beta decay (DBD) is at present the most powerful tool to determine the effective value of the mass of a Majorana neutrino. The results already obtained in this lepton violating process will be reported and the two presently running DBD experiments briefly discussed. The future second generation experiments will be reviewed with special emphasis to those already at least partially approved. In conclusion the peculiar and interdisciplinary nature of these searches will be stressed in their exciting aim to discover if neutrino is indeed a Majorana particle.