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The assembly of the NEXT-100 detector is complete!

Presently, the detector is working at low pressure to test and calibrate the instrumentation. NEXT-100 employs 60 photomultipliers in the energy plane, compared to the 12 PMTs used in its predecessor, NEXT-White. The tracking plane is made up of 3584 SiPMs (1792 in NEXT-White) meant to provide the topological signature of the events.

NEXT-100 is expected to be able to provide a background rate below 10^-3 counts / keV / kg / year and to reach a sensitivity to the neutrinoless double beta decay half-life of 6 x 10²⁵ years at the 90% CL for 3 years of data taking.

This detector will also set the grounds for the construction of a ton-scale detector, NEXT-HD, boosting the sensitivity above 10²⁷ yr.