Abstract
Double beta decay (DBD), first predicted in 1935 by Maria Goeppert-Mayer, has evolved from a marginal activity in nuclear physics to one of the top priority research areas of the physics worldwide, for understanding neutrinos primarily and also for constraining the nuclear structure models to a large extent. In last 75 years, a large progress has been made in the field of double beta decay studies, experimentally as well as theoretically, resulting in successful observation of two neutrino double beta decay for several nuclei and pinning down the mass of neutrino to sub eV scale (~0.2-0.5 eV; depending on the choice of nuclear matrix element) – through a single claim for the observation of neutrinoless double beta decay of 76Ge. Though, this clam, still needs to be verified by other experiments for 76Ge and other candidate nuclei as well, it has greatly boosted up the research projects related to this particular lepton violating process. More importantly, Indian efforts, however at primitive stage presently, are also on to develop a state of the art double beta decay experiment at India based Neutrino Observatory (INO). In the present talk, I will discuss our results for DBD and also present an overview of the current status along with future prospects of DBD studies.
